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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE 

aROWUNTG CHRISTIAJN- 



OR, 



W\)t JJPetoelopment of t\)t Spiritual ilift 



BY 



REV. WILLIAM EDWARD BIEDERWOLF 

AUTHOR OF "A HELP TO THE STUDY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT," 
"THE WHITE LIFE," ETC. 



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THE WINONA PUBLISHING COMPANY 
CHICAGO, ILL. WINONA LAKE, IND. 






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COPYRIGHT, 1903 

BY 

THE WINONA PUBLISHING COMPANY 



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The following addresses were delivered at 
the Winona Lake, Benton Harbor (Mich.), 
Montreat (N. C), and other Bible Conferences 
during the seasons of 1902 and 1903. They 
are sent out at the request of many who 
heard them and with the writer's prayer that 
the Holy Spirit may use them to glorify Christ, 
If you, my dear reader, only see Him more 
clearly and love Him more dearly because you 
have seen these pages it will have paid a thou- 
sand fold for the labor of producing them. 

W. E. B. 

MONTICELLO, IkD. 



TO 

WHOSE PRAYERS GAVE HER BOY TO GOD 

AND 

WHOSE LOKG, UKTIRII^G DEVOTION 

MADE POSSIBLE HIS PREPARATION FOR THE 

GOSPEL MINISTRY, 

THIS LITTLE VOLUME 

IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED. 



There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicode- 
mus, a ruler of the Jews. The same came to Him by- 
night and said unto Him, Rabbi, we know that thou 
art a teacher come from God : for no man can do 
these miracles, except God be with him. Jesus 
answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say 
unto thee, Except a man be born from above he can- 
not see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto 
Him, How can a man be born when he is old? can 
he enter the second time into his mother's womb 
and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say 
unto thee. Except a man be born of water and of the 
Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. 
That which is born of the flesh is flesh ; and that 
which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that 
I said unto thee, ye must be born from above. — 
Saint John's Gospel, Chapter Three, 



Contentjs 






PAGE 


The Life Implanted . 


. 9 


How xo Geow .... 


29 


How Not to Geow 


. 49 


Aeeested Development . 


67 


The Signs of Geowth 


. 87 


The Type of Geowth 


. 107 



'^But grow in grace a7id the knoioledge of 
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.'^'' 

2 Peter 3: 18. 



'€\)t (S^roVDtng Cljrtsttan 

or, 
t^t mtMopmmt of t\)t spiritual !Life 



THE LIFE IMPLANTED 
**Ye must be born from above."— John 3:7. 

I COUNT it the worthiest ambition of the 
human soul — the desire to increase its 
capacity for God ; to grow, and in growing 
to become more like God. 

Paul in writing to the Thessalonians said, 
*'We beseech you, brethren, that ye increase 
more and more." If you could translate that 
utterance out of the sphere in which it has its 
reference as uttered by Paul into any other 
sphere of life, you would find it the very thing 
that eyery man is trying to do. If a man has 
riches he wants more ; if he has knowledge the 
very having it creates a thirst to have more ; if 
he has skill he yearns to be still more accurate ; 
if he is famous he would add another to his 
list of triumphs. But I think the saddest 
thing in the world is the nominal child of God 
altogether anxious about such increase and 
almost if not altogether indifferent about that 
spiritual increase which constitutes the true 
9 



Zbc (Browing Cbrlstian 



wealth of this life and the sole wealth of the 
life to come. 

When a man dies it is usually asked, '^How 
much was he worth?" and the answer comes in 
dollars. But that's a false estimate. Neither 
in life nor in death will you or I be worth any 
more than the measure of our growth in grace. 
Dear child, you are looking for success; you 
have a hunger for knowledge; possibly a long- 
ing for wealth; but when the ocean of eternity 
shall break upon these sands of time, though 
you have the laurel wreath upon your brow 
and millions of shining gold at your feet, if 
the path along which you have come is but the 
long reminder of wasted hours for cultivating 
the acquaintance of God, and through the 
knowledge of Him to become like Him, you 
will be a great deal poorer and more unsuc- 
cessful than God ever intended you should be. 
I would that God might create within us as we 
go along a keen realization of the importance 
of growing in grace and a deep hungering and 
thirsting after righteousness, so that while we 
are growing in stature and increasing in knowl- 
edge we may become large in soul, having a 
mind to appreciate and a heart to love and a 
will to do the things of God. 
10 



TLbc %ifc irmplante5 



Peter tells us to ''grow in grace,'' but there 
must first be life before there can be growth. 
This is as true in the spiritual world as it is in 
the natural. Science with all its defining has 
never been able to define life. Formerly there 
were two great schools of science, one teaching 
that ''life can spring into being of itself," — a 
theory known as Spontaneous Generation; the 
other holding that life can only come from pre- 
existing life. You can hardly find a respecta- 
ble scientist to-day who will lend his name to 
the former view. Evolution is forced to begin 
with life. The evolutionist thinks he has found 
his way back in material to the primordial 
germ,but where life came from he confesses he 
has never been able to find out. Here at least 
the hand of God seems to have written, "Thus 
far and no farther." How life originated, Mr. 
Darwin designates "a hopeless inquiry." 

Now an exact parallel to this is found in the 
spiritual world. That a man must be born 
again before he can enter the kingdom of God 
is a scientific necessity. 

Do you remember the story of the young 

artist who had wrought so long upon an angel 

statue and concealed himself to hear what the 

master Angelo would say about it?^ — when he 

11 



Zbc (BrowiuG Cbristian 



heard the master say, ''It only lacks one thing," 
so near broken hearted did he become that he 
could neither eat nor sleep, until one in deep 
concern for him made his way to Angelo's 
studio to inquire what it was the statue 
lacked, and the great artist said, "Man, it 
lacks only life ! If it had life it would be as 
perfect as God Himself could make it." 

Many people honestly fail to understand this. 
They cannot see the difference between a man's 
morality and a Christian's righteousness. Why 
a moral man should not simply grow better and 
better until he is good enough to enter the 
kingdom of God they honestly fail to see, but 
it's the difference between a lifeless statue and 
a living soul. The difference between a man's 
morality and a Christian's goodness is not one 
of quantity but of quality. To make this 
plainer, let us enter into the sphere of natural 
things. If I should ask you why a tree could 
not keep on growing and growing until it 
became an animal, you could see in an instant 
why a merely moral man cannot grow into the 
goodness that pleases God. To draw a closer 
distinction: if one should ask why the sour crab 
cannot keep on growing and developing until 
its yield becomes the luscious golden fruit of 
12 



Ubc %ifc 1FmpIante& 



the russet, he would have a perfectly intelligent 
answer to the question perplexing so many 
people. It's a difference in generation and 
therefore in the kind of life that grows, and 
thus we see that the impassable gulf between 
the different kinds of life in the natural world 
has its exact parallel in the spiritual sphere in 
the barrier between the natural and the super- 
natural life as set forth by the Word of God. 
In the natural world, that passage, if ever 
effected, must be by the impartation of life 
from the higher to the lower ; so in the spiritual 
world in order to a spiritual development there 
must first be the implanting of a spiritual life. 
This is what Jesus calls being ^'bom from 
above," or as the authorized version has it, 
''born again." And so before we speak about 
growing we must be sure we are born. 

And now I can almost hear some one saying 
''What does it mean to be born again, and how 
did I ever come to have this new life, and if I 
have it not, how can I get it?" Well, the new 
birth is a profound mystery — but not one whit 
more mysterious to the theologian than the first 
birth is to the physiologist, ^sop tells us of 
a hen that laid golden eggs, but a really wise 
man would be no more surprised to see a hen 
13 



Zhc 6rowfna Cbristian 



lay a golden egg and that egg hatch into a 
young alligator than he is to see a tiny acorn 
produce a mighty acre-covering oak, so far as 
his ability goes to explain either the one or the 
other. There are some things that really smart 
men do not know. ''A religion without mys- 
tery is an absurdity." 

But let us look for a few moments at the 
matter in question, the initial fact of divine 
experience. The great difference between man 
and animal is that to man was given the addi- 
tional gift of a spirit that makes him a moral 
being and endows him with immortality. Now 
let us suppose a seed which we intend to plant. 
We are accustomed to say that within the seed 
is the germ of life. We might call that germ, 
whatever it is, the spirit of the seed, although 
it is not immortal and if it is not cared for it 
will perish forever. Only, however, when that 
seed is planted and comes into correspondence 
with certain environments does it really begin 
to live, for in that correspondence the spirit of 
nature knocks at the door of the seed and says, 
^'May I come in?" and entering in, somehow, 
through some mysterious touch not given man 
to understand, life is generated within the 
waiting spirit of the seed. 
14 



TLbc %itc irmplanteS 



Now I know that some astute theologian 
might venture an objection here, because man 
is said to be dead in trespasses and in sins. 
But so is the seed dead. Man of himself can 
do nothing ; what more can the seed do? What 
more helpless and hopeless thing can you 
imagine than a shrivelled seed lying on the 
shelf? Apart from the spirit of nature, the 
spirit within the seed, whatever it may be, 
never will live, and apart from the Spirit of 
God the spirit of man is doomed to an eternal 
death because it cannot generate one spark of 
life for itself. Analogy usually breaks down 
somewhere, but the point of comparison here is 
that the life-giving power, both in the seed and 
in the man comes from tvithout. 

But lest some one should protest that the 
seed has within it the principle of life while 
man has not, let us look beyond the point of 
the analogy just mentioned. Where did the 
seed get that germ or that principle of life? 
We say that God put it there and the scientist 
must admit as much or at least confess he 
does not know. So too must the spiritual life 
come from God if man is ever to possess it. 
We will begin therefore as far back as possible. 
We read that ^'God created man in His own 
15 



XCbe ©rowing Cbrtstian 



image, in His own image created He him." 
What was this image? Not physical, for God 
is not such. N'ot spiritual, for the Devil is a 
spiritual being. Nor can we hardly say it is 
psychical, — ^I mean giving him the power to 
think, to will and to love, for I am not so sure, 
indeed I think we must admit, that animals do 
these things; at least the Devil does, possibly 
with the exception of loving. But in His 
moral image I think we must take it ; that is, 
man became in the very beginning the temple 
of the Spirit of God. God's Spirit entered into 
him, whereby his understanding was enlight- 
ened above all things else to know God, the 
will inclined to do the will of God, and the 
affections purified to love the things of God. 
Then came the temptation and man fell, and 
that which had been the temple of God went 
to ruin because the Holy Spirit who dwelt in it 
was under the painful necessity of leaving the 
polluted spot. Then followed the descent of a 
ruined race and every son of Adam has been 
born in sin and shapen in iniquity, and until 
man's nature is renewed by the restoration of 
the Holy Spirit ; not only is his mind, his will 
and his affections alienated from God, but 
Scripture is very express in stating his utter 
16 



Ube Xffe iFmplanteO 



inability to do the things which are right. 
''Cannot" is the word used concerning him. 
As to his understanding, he cannot know the 
things of God (1 Cor. 2:14); as to his will, he 
cannot be subject to the law of God (Eom. 
8:7); as to his affection, he cannot love God 
(same verse) , and as to his life, he cannot please 
God (Eom. 8: 8). Upon his utter lack, there- 
fore, of spiritual life and his utter inability to 
do anything for himself is grounded the neces- 
sity for the new birth, which means the res- 
toration of the moral image of God by the 
re-incoming of the Spirit of God. ''Verily, I say 
unto you, except a man be born again (except 
he have the new life imparted to him from 
above) he cannot see the kingdom of God." 
He lacks the essential condition for seeing it. 
As well try to think with his foot or to love 
with his hand as to appreciate the things of 
God so as to do them without being born from 
above. The nature which a man gets at his 
first birth is human ; the nature which he gets 
at his second birth is divine. The one is the 
Adam nature, the other is the Christ nature, 
and by no course of education, by no kind of 
ethical culture, by no process of evolution, can 
the natural man be made into the spiritual. It 
17 



XTbe Orowtno Cbristtan 



is scientifically impossible. Te must be born 
again. The Spirit of God must come and bring 
spiritual life with. Him, and when He has come 
in only then does a man become a spiritual 
being in the highest sense of spirituality. 

Dear friend, before we go on to speak of 
growth would it not be well to pause long 
enough to ask, *'Have I the life from which a 
growth in grace can really spring, or have I 
been finding satisfaction in a character wrought 
by human workmanship rather than produced 
by the Spirit of God?" Some one has said, 
**One birth, two deaths; two births, one 
death.'' Have you been born the second 
time? Have you really and sincerely come to 
God and told Him that He could have His 
way with you? If you have, then you may 
trust God for the regeneration and not worry 
about it. 

Then Paul tells us that *Hhe Spirit beareth 
witness with our spirit that we are the children 
of God." Have you such a witness? Dear 
friend, if you are walking in newness of life 
and trying to keep yourself unspotted from the 
world you will not be without the witness of 
the Spirit. If He does nothing more. He will 
say to you every moment you stop to listen, 
18 



XCbe Xife UmpIanteD 



"You have taken God at His word and God 
will never fail you." 

But some one wants to know if there are not 
certain effects of the new birth which can help 
us to an assurance such as we fain would have? 
Yes, there are such effects, and while they 
become more and more manifest as one grows 
in grace they are in evidence from the very 
hour of regeneration. These results come in 
the most natural direction. If I should ask 
you to mention for me the faculties of your 
soul, you would say, ^*I have a mind with 
which to think ; I have a will with which to 
choose and I have a heart with which to love," 
and further than this you would not be able to 
go. Xow it is exactly upon these faculties the 
Holy Spirit operates when He regenerates. He 
illumines the understanding; He renews the 
will; He purifies the affection. 

What about your understanding? Does it 
appreciate the things of God? *'I don't see 
what you find in that picture to hold your 
attention so long," said one friend to another. 
"Don't you wish you could?" replied the 
other. The last man had within him the 
spirit of an artist. There was an attractive- 
ness in the picture appealing to something 
19 



Ube ©rowing Cbristfan 



within his soul. Let us test ourselves by this 
principle. 

1. The Word of God. Does it mean any- 
thing to you or is it a dull and uninteresting 
book? We find it written within that a real 
Christian will feed upon the Word and it will 
be as manna to his soul, but when you per- 
chance have tasted of it you have found your- 
self altogether without an appetite for such 
nourishment. It took such a hold upon one 
person that he said he would meditate on it day 
and night, but his eyes had been opened that 
he might behold wonderful things as he read. 

2. What about Prayer? Has it any meaning 
for you? When you hear people singing about 
the ''Sweet hour of Prayer," do you find your- 
self wondering what they mean? Possibly you 
thought once you would pray, but you heard 
no sweet whispering of the divine voice and the 
God, in whom of course everyone believes, 
seemed too far away to hear, or too uncon- 
cerned, for ought you knew, to care if He had 
heard. 

3. What about the voice of nature? To the 
regenerate person Paul says "all things have 
become new." A man who had recently given 
himself to Christ was walking through the 

20 



^be Xffe ITmplanteb 



garden with a friend and plucking a flower from 
its stem said, '^ Isn't it beautiful; I never knew 
how beautiful a flower was until I gave myself 
to Christ." There's a volume of meaning in 
that. Things do look and are more beautiful 
to a Christian because he knows that although 
the blessings of Providence are over the good 
and bad alike, it is all for Christ's sake and in 
everything round about him he has a continual 
vision of his Lord. 

I am not going to take upon myself the 
responsibility of unchristianizing anybody; the 
very appreciation, whose lack we have been 
deploring, is itself a thing of growth. But if 
you are an utter stranger to these things or the 
appetite for them, I wonder if we must not 
look for the reason in the words of Paul where 
he says, ''The natural man receiveth not the 
things of God, neither can he know them, for 
they are spiritually discerned." 

They have pictured to us a girl, blind and 
deaf, placed upon a tower-top and touching 
the world about her only through the soles of 
her feet and the breezes that kissed her cheek ; 
and then from the throne of God came an 
angel and touching those sightless eyes and 
soundless ears cried,' 'Daughter, see ! Daughter, 
21 



Ube ©rowing Cbrfstfan 



hear!" and instantly there flowed into her soul 
through the open eyes and ears the myriad 
sights and sounds of a world all new. ''Old 
things," says Paul, ''have passed away; all 
things have become new. Something like that 
is the experience when by His Spirit is first 
revealed the Son of God to man. Friend, you 
need not be brilliant in mind to have the eyes 
of your understanding opened, but if you are 
willing that the Spirit of God shall have His 
way with you, there will come to you such an 
appreciation of Christ as shall seem like the 
creation of a new faculty within your soul, 
whereby you shall see and hear and understand 
things which the eye and ear and heart of the 
natural man hath never known. 

And now a word about the other powers of 
the soul. We spoke about the will; what 
about yours? It gives you the power to 
choose, but what about your choices? Whose 
pleasure and whose glory do you consult in the 
choices you make? Have you ever known what 
it means to do a thing for Christ's sake, or are 
you continually seeking to please yourself? 
Have you a wrong passion which your will is 
powerless to conquer? Are you weak in the 
hour of temptation? 



xrbe Xife UmpIanteJ) 



Bishop I Taylor told us of a black man, 
recently converted, who was kneeling at the 
altar for communion, and presently the Bishop 
saw him looking intently and wildly at the man 
by his side and then in great agitation he arose 
and fled into the forest. Presently he came 
back and quietly taking his place at the altar, 
finished the communion, eating from the same 
loaf and drinking from the same cup with the 
man from whose presence he had Just fled. 
After the service Bishop Taylor inquired the 
cause of his strange conduct, and the man told 
him that in the one by his side he recognized the 
one who had long ago slain his father and that 
he had sworn a great oath of revenge. But in 
the meantime he had been converted, yet when 
he saw the man there he remembered the mur- 
der and his oath and the old hatred awoke 
within him, and so great was the temptation 
that came upon him that it drove him out into 
the wilderness where the Evil One assailed him, 
but upon his knees he conquered through the 
power of a will renewed by the Spirit of God. 
Do you have victory or do you have continual 
defeat? 

And now briefly a question about your affec- 
tions. ''Where your treasure is there will your 
23 



Ube ©rowing Cbristian 



heart be also." A wardrobe is a poor prison 
for an immortal spirit. It could find nothing 
to wear there if summoned suddenly into the 
presence of God. It would be sad to lose your 
heart and find it in the vault, hard and yellow 
like the gold upon which it is set ; to discover 
it living, or rather dying, upon the vitiated 
atmosphere of the dancing room, but in just 
such places will it be if such are the things 
that are dear to it. But not only does the one 
who has passed from death unto life turn from 
the sinful and the vile and become enamored of 
that which is pure and holy, but he begins to 
see things in their true relation and to seek 
above all things else for the treasure that is 
neither corrupted by moth nor stolen by 
thieves. 

And then you know that John says, ''We 
know we have passed from death unto life 
because we love the brethren." The Christian 
finds his heart going out to all his fellowmen, 
but first, of course, and in a more intimate 
sense, to the children of God. I know of no 
surer sign of the unregenerate condition than 
that one's heart should feel no stronger attrac- 
tion for a Christian than for one who has not 
crowned the Christian's Christ in his heart. 
24 



Ube %itc UmpIanteD 



This is doubtless the primary reference of the 
word ''brethren." But the Christian does not 
stop with this. His sympathy has a wider 
reach. He will have a concern for the unsaved. 
Mr. Morgan tells of two men, nominal Chris- 
tians, who worked side by side for five years 
before finding out, either of them, that the 
other had ever made a profession of religion. 
One of them, in telling this to Mr. Morgan, 
said, "Wasn't it funny?" "Funny!" said Mr. 
Morgan, "why no; go find the man and let us 
get down before God; you never have been 
born again." I am judging no one, but surely 
if one has the life of God within him it ought 
not take the world five years to find it out. 

I know these remarks are calculated to make 
us feel uncomfortable, yet nothing that any 
man might say could ever bring such a feeling 
to him who is trusting in Christ and has the 
witness of the Spirit within himself. Nor 
must we forget what was said a moment ago — 
that these very graces are the things in which 
we grow and may not in the first hours of 
Christian experience be so much in evidence, 
but if you are forced to feel as you read, that 
your experience has been destitute of them all, 
then I pray you to ask God for a vision of 
25 



Ube (Browing Cbrtstfan 



yourself; and then ask Him for a vision of 
Himself and beseech Him to stamp His image 
upon you. 

When God was about to make man He called 
to Him His three ministering angels and turn- 
ing to the first said, ''Justice, shall we make 
man?" and Justice said, ''Make him not, oh 
God, for he will trample on Thy laws." Then 
said God to the second, "Truth, shall we make 
man?" and Truth said, "Oh, God, make him 
not, for he will pollute Thy sanctuaries." 
Then said God, turning to the third, "Mercy, 
shall we make man?" and Mercy, dropping on 
her knees and looking up through her tears, 
said, "Oh, God, make him, and I will watch 
over him with my care and follow him in all 
the dark paths he will have to tread." Then 
God made man in His own image and said, 
"Oh, man, thou art the child of Mercy. Go." 
Unbelieving one, thou art the child of mercy ! 
How good mercy has been to you ! — sending you 
the only Son of God to atone for your sin, fol- 
lowing you in your sin, whispering of forgive- 
ness and wooing you, if possible, back to 
heaven. Let us draw back the bolts of pur 
wills now and He who stands without with the 
gift of life will open the door and enter in, and 
26 



XTbe Xife irmplante& 



thus having life we will grow in His grace and 
in the knowledge of Him, and thus growing 
become like Him whom we shall some day see 
face to face. God grant it ! 



27 



"Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for 
your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; 
nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not 
the life more than meat and the body than raiment? 
Behold the fowls of the air: they sow not neither do 
they reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly 
Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than 
they? Which of you by taking thought can add one 
cubit to his stature? And why take ye thought for 
raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how 
THEY GROW ; they toU not neither do they spin. And 
yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory 
was not arrayed like one of these.''^ — St. Matthew's 
Gospel, Chapter 6. 



28 



t)o\v to (Brow 



HOW TO GROW 

" Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow." 
—Matt. 6:28. 

I BELIE YE with Browning that ''Man was 
made to grow, not stop." Greater men 
than Browning evidently believed in this 
too, for we hear Paul declaring that ''Whom 
He did foreknow. He also did predestinate to 
be conformed to the image of His Son" — to 
grow into His likeness. He tells the Colos- 
sians that he only wished they might know 
how he had prayed for them that they might 
be well rooted and grounded, and to the Thes- 
salonians he said, "Brethren, we beseech yon 
that you increase more and more." And 
Peter, likewise, in more places than one, leaves 
with the people the same injunction. We have 
spent a little time in studying the life as im- 
planted ; let us now spend a little in seeing 
how it grows. 

If you are sighing to-day for the "joy which 
once you knew when first you found the 
Lord," it is because you have not been a grow- 
ing Christian. Conversion is only the begin- 
ning of what God can do for a human soul. 
29 



Zbc Growing Cbristian 



**Have you on the Lord believed? 

Still there's more to follow; 
Of His grace have you received? 

Still there's more to follow. 
More and more, more and more, 

Always more to follow ; 
Oh, His matchless, boundless love ! — 

Still there's more to follow. " 

"For He is able to do for us exceedingly 
abundantly above all , that we ask or think," 
and we may "increase more and more" and 
"grow in grace" until the measure of our 
stature shall be something like the fullness of 
His own. 

I want God to do for me all that He can do 
for any man in this life. I know I shall be 
satisfied when I awake in His likeness, but I 
do not want to be satisfied here with anything 
less than the nearest likeness to Him that any 
man can bear. If there are deep things of God 
which can only be searched by His Spirit, then 
I want His Spirit to lead me into the knowl- 
edge of the deepest truth ; if there are moun- 
tain top experiences from which I can come, 
like His servant of old, with my face shining 
with the presence of God, I want to go up into 
the mountain ; if down in the valley there are 
trials and afllictions from which I may come up 



t)ow to ©tow 



with my soul chastened, and be more meek and 
lowly, more tender and sympathetic, and more 
like the Man of Sorrows, I want to go down 
into the valley ; if there are conditions which 
if fulfilled will bring a power from God that can 
give me victory over sin and can make and 
keep my life pure and spotless and holy, I want 
to fulfill the conditions and receive that 
power. 

**More like my Saviour would I grow, 
More of His grace to others show ; 
More of His saving fullness see, 
More of His love who died for me. " 

Science recognizes what is known as a * 'bal- 
ance of life," a condition of life where there is 
neither growth nor retrogression; but such a 
state of equilibrium is really foreign to organic 
things save in theory, and what seems to be 
such a balance is really a painfully slow pro- 
gression, or what is more likely an equally slow 
retrogression. Where there is life there must 
be either growth or decay. Peter seems to 
have had this in mind in his epistle. He had 
been telling them of a day of testing which was 
to come and then warned them lest they should 
fall from their steadfastness, adding immedi- 
ately thereunto, ''But grow in grace." For 
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them it was either to fall from their steadfast- 
ness or to grow in grace. There is no stand- 
ing still, and if the life of the soul is to be 
what God would have it be it must be one of 
continual progress in grace and in the knowl- 
edge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Most people have recognized the infinite 
desirability of being good. It was Huxley who 
said that if some great power would agree to 
make him always think what is good and do 
what is right on condition of being turned into 
a sort of a clock and wound up every morning 
he would instantly close with the offer. Well, 
there is a way, and that without being turned 
into a sort of a clock or any other machine ; it 
is to become good just as a lily becomes beau- 
tiful. But alas! for the number who are 
trying some other method, but you can always 
hear the rattle of the wheels and the din of the 
machinery. Suppose we mention a few of 
these man-contrived methods. 

1. One is Resolution. I will resolve and 
therefore be good. But a man might as well 
try to lift himself by pulling at his bootstraps. 
A good resolution is nothing more than a fit of 
sporadic earnestness, and while they are a good 
kind of fits for every man to have they can 
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never make a man really good. Suppose the 
little lad who always wants to be a man 
resolves some day that he will get big, can he 
by any thought whatever add one cubit to his 
stature? The Master said, Xo. This is the 
usual method of the unregenerate, but the 
really sorrowful thing is that so many Chris- 
tians are trusting in it too. I warrant that all 
of us have over and over again resolved and 
then failed at the very point of our resolution. 
We forget that the very thing we resolve to 
become would be the easy and natural outcome 
if God's way had the supremacy instead of our 
own. 

2. Another method we might call Eradication. 
Dealing with one sin at a time. If too diffi- 
cult to wholly abandon at once, I will do so by 
degrees and when this one has been eradicated 
I will turn my attention to another. The 
trouble with this theory is that most of us have 
so many sins that we'd die before we got half 
way through, and if we did get through we'd 
be a dwarf anyhow, for we've added nothing 
however much we ^ve taken away. But the 
chief difficulty is this : we used the word eradi- 
cation, but that is exactly what does not occur. 
The root of the sin is still there and when we 
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think we have conquered one and turned our 
attention to another, the first puts on new 
strength and marks the point of another 
defeat. 

3. The third method is that of Lnitation. I 
will copy the virtues of the good and so become 
like them. But most of us are very poor hands 
at imitation, and at best such an art only yields 
an artificial product and people can always tell 
the difference. Titian was a good imitator but 
he never became great till he left his master's 
models and getting close up to nature's heart 
allowed her to breathe her inspiration into his 
soul. Mr. Meyer was one time traveling by 
the side of a young man who was reading 
Thomas A. Kempis' Imitatio7i of Christy and 
noticing the book said, *'A grand book." 
*'Yes," was the reply. '*I have found some- 
thing better," said Mr. Meyer. ** Better?" 
**Yes, better for me," said Mr. Meyer. ''I 
was never a very good hand at imitating. " He 
said when the master gave him a drawing to copy 
at school his imitation needed always to have a 
statement written beneath to let one know for 
what it was intended. But said he: *'My 
young friend, if my drawing master could have 
infused the spirit of his skill into my brain and 
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hand, he could have drawn through me as fair 
a drawing as his own. And if instead of 
imitating Christ far away in glory He will come 
by the Holy Spirit and dwell in me, by His 
grace He shall work through my poor-yielded 
life a life something like His own fair life." 

Ah, friends, now we are getting back to 
where we started; there's a better way to be 
good than these we've been considering — in 
fact, the only way to be really good. If we can 
say, like Paul, "Christ liveth in me," why not 
let the Christ-life develop within us? ''He 
that hath the Son hath life," and haying 
studied the life as implanted let us now ''con- 
sider the lilies, how they grow." For I am 
sure if we can learn the lesson of the lily, our 
life instead of being a series of dismal disap- 
pointments and heart-rending failures, will rise 
into the beauty of holiness even as the sweet 
flower of which we speak rises from the garden 
of its God into its more than Solomon-like 
glory. 

Three things present themselves at this point : 
1. The mysteriousness of growth. It is not 
the process the Master would have us contem- 
plate, for this we never could understand, and 
in order to grow it is not necessary to know 
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how to grow. No scientist understands hoiu 
the lily grows. It is so with the growth of 
character. If yours is a manufactured good- 
ness, like other artificial things, it will not be 
hard to explain ; if it is the fruit of an inner 
growing life, the child of God may appreciate 
it, but God alone can understand it. 

2. The lily does not try to grow. Of course 
that were an impossibility for an unconscious 
thing, but it's Just as true of your life and 
mine, both in the physical and the spiritual 
sphere. This is the lesson Christ meant to 
enforce. No amount of anxiety or worry or 
thought will add one cubit to our stature or 
perfect one grace within our soul. The Chris- 
tian's life is to be a composed life. Growth 
really takes place; if there is life and health in 
the body growth is not only natural but inev- 
itable; it is so with the soul, and where there 
is health of the soul the life within the soul 
will unfold itself as naturally as the lily from 
its bud. 

3. There is, however, a certain condition of 
health and it is to this the Christian is to turn 
his attention, and as he does so he will discover 
that the growing will take care of itself or 
rather God will take care of it, for He it is 

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after all who does the growing. Certainly if we 
are to be healthy we must have the proper diet. 
The reason we have so many puny Christians is 
the want of proper nourishment. 

It has become the custom, and really a divine 
one, to give the poor children of the city a few 
weeks' outing in the country. A handful of 
them were once taken to a farm house and a rare 
treat for them it was indeed. The mother of 
the home noticed that one little fellow did not 
drink his milk, and she asked him why. And 
he said, '*I ain't got no milk." ''Why, yes," 
she said, "Johnny, that's your milk right by 
your plate." And the little fellow said, ''That 
ain't milk; milk's blue." He had been living 
on watered milk down in the city and almost 
the hardest trial that ever came into his life 
was when he had to leave the fresh, creamy 
drink at the farm house and go back to the 
doctored milk of the city.. Too many Chris- 
tians are living on blue milk, and is it any 
wonder there is so much stunted growth among 
us? There's rich food that God's prepared; it 
brings health and a relish to those who try it. 

The Christian's nourishment comes to him 
through certain channels and to these now for 
a brief time let us turn our attention. If we 
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were asked, What are these channels, — these 
means of grace? we would almost recite them 
in concert, so apparent are they as the chief 
source of spiritual strength. To carry on the 
analogy, we might liken these means of grace 
to the lily's roots, each of which, as well as 
every feeler, has its own little mouth through 
which passes the heat and moisture of the soil 
on their way to strengthen the growing plant 
above. There are more of these roots than we 
shall mention, but the ones you are expecting 
to be mentioned are three : 

1. The first is the Word of God. Peter says, 
**x\s newborn babes desire the sincere milk of 
the Word that ye may grow thereby." What- 
ever else that means, it means that the Word 
of God is a good thing to feed on. It's too bad 
that so many people seem to have misunder- 
stood Peter. Milk, you know, is food which 
has passed through the digestion of another, 
and so there are some who think that about all 
the feeding they need is what the minister 
hands out to them on Sunday morning. I 
refer to these bottle Christians who use their 
pastor as a nurse. How strange that so many 
Christians should be satisfied with a nourish- 
ment like that ! Whatever else Peter meant he 
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didn't mean that by the sincere milk of the 
Word. How sad it is and yet how true that 
the majority of Christians are not students of 
the Bible. In some homes it is only an orna- 
ment for the center table or a family record to 
tell when the old folks were married and when 
brother died and sister was born. There are 
thousands of nominal Christians who can tell 
you the number of cards in a eucher deck but 
couldn't tell the number of books in the Bible 
to save their lives. Not that there is any par- 
ticular merit in this latter, but that it is sad 
indeed that anyone called by the name of 
Christ should know so much about the one and 
so little about the other. What growth can 
you expect in such a soul? They are indeed 
like the rich farmer who had his barns stored 
with corn and said to his soul, ''Soul, thou 
hast much goods, eat, drink and be merry." 
Trying to feed his soul on corn. A neglected 
Bible means a starved and puny spirit, a 
dwarfed soul and a barren life. Jesus in His 
priestly prayer for you and me said to the 
Father, "Sanctify them by Thy truth; Thy 
word is truth." What does this mean but 
that the Word is the chief instrument in our 
sanctification? It is from the Word that the 
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Spirit takes of the things of Christ and shows 
them unto us and thus only can we come to 
know the living Word through a thorough 
acquaintance with the Word which is written, 
and that is what sanctification means — to know 
Christ. 

And how shall I read the Word. 

(1) First of all, Prayerfully. That the Holy 
Spirit may be your interpreter and that you 
may have that spirit which will cause you to 
believe every word of it as God's message for 
you. 

(2) Frequently. More especially in stated 
and uninterrupted seasons. To be healthy and 
growing one must be regular in his diet. 

(3) Carefully. Eeading the Bible every day 
simply for the sake of regularity is of little 
value; as if such a perfunctory performance 
were to act as a charm about us during the 
day ! Such people might save even the little 
time required by securing a minature Bible to 
hang about their necks. One cold morning 
as Miss Havergal was about her daily Bible 
study, her sister besought her to read with her 
feet more comfortably to the fire. ''But then, 
Marie," said the saintly invalid, ''I can't rule 
my lines so neatly; just see what a find I've 

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got." She was in the habit of marking her 
Bible, which is most excellent; but when one 
studies it as she did there will be no need to 
mark the place where you stop that you may 
know where to begin next time. That's the 
way Mr. Moody used to hoe potatoes when a 
boy, so he said, and that's the way many people 
read their Bibles. It seems as though God 
has purposely hidden the treasures of His 
Word, some of them deep, and others at least 
a little underneath the surface, as if to test our 
earnestness in searching for them and to insure 
a keener appreciation and a profounder joy 
when once we have brought them to light. 
What a wonderful book it is! 

**Were all the seas one chrysolite, 
The earth a golden ball, 
And diamonds all the stars of night, 
This book were worth them all!" 

To studiously and carefully pore over its 
pages is like eating meat at the King's table. 
Dear child of God, are you neglecting this 
Word or are you feeding upon it? I am sure if 
you can say with the prophet, ''Thy words 
were found and I did eat them," that you can 
also say with him, ''And Thy Word was unto 
me the joy and rejoicing of my heart." "I 
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will answer for it," said Romaine, *'the longer 
you read the Bible the more you will like it^ — it 
will grow sweeter and sweeter; and the more 
you get into the spirit of it the more you will 
get into the Spirit of Christ." 

2. The second condition of growth, or root 
rather, through which the soul is to be fed is 
Secret Prayer. And by secret prayer is meant 
rather the occasion of deliberate approach, 
when in our closet, as Andrew Murray says, 
**we are shut out from men and shut in with 
God"; this rather than breathing the atmos- 
phere of constant communion, this rather than 
praying without ceasing, is what is meant by 
secret prayer. The two are not, of course, to 
be vitally severed. They really animate and 
feed each other and are the complements in the 
life of perfect fellowship. How blessed so to 
breathe the atmosphere of prayer that anywhere 
and everywhere the soul will cast quick glances 
at its ever present Lord ; glances which speak 
to Him in adoration, in love, in petition and 
reliance ; to have such constant fellowship that 
even the smallest details of our lives will not 
be too insignificant to mention to Him. But 
I very much fear that one who thus expects to 
commune without the more stated seasons of 
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private prayer will find himself forgetting his 
privilege in the busy rush of life, and certainly 
there could be no better preparation for such a 
day's communion than to begin that day with 
a season of quiet interview with Him whom we 
desire to go with us to our daily duty. 

In Hosea 14: 5 we hear the Lord saying, '^I 
will be as the dew unto Israel and Israel shall 
grow up as the lily." The dew, it is said, falls 
or gathers only when the atmosphere is still, 
and so the heavenly refreshing comes best in 
the quiet of communion with our God. When 
the Psalmist said, '^ Evening, morning and 
noon will I pray," he used a word that means 
**to muse," ''to meditate," and its Greek 
equivalent carries with it the idea of ''narrating 
fully," and so when we have gotten alone with 
God and told Him all about it we hear the 
sweet whisper of His approval, or of His for- 
giveness and receive His all-sufiicient grace, 
and no wonder we become strong. Tell Him 
all about it? All about what? All about 
everything. All about your sin? Yes, He'll 
forgive. All about your temptation? Yes, 
He'll strengthen you to overcome. All about 
your failure? Yes, He'll help you to succeed. 
All about your sickness? Yes, He'll heal your 
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disease. All about your joys? Yes, He 
wants to share your happiness. That's what 
real fellowship means, a sharing with each 
other of every concern. 

**0h, the pure delight of a single hour 
That before Thy throne I spend ; 
When I kneel in prayer, and with Thee, my God, 
I commune as friend with friend." 

We don't need to dwell upon the fact that 
such communion is conducive to growth in 
grace. The delight of it seems to make us 
forget all about the growing and it is good that 
it should, for it is not by ''taking thought" 
that we grow. 

3. And now just a word, about the other root 
or channel of grace. It is Exercise^ of course. 
The idle arm grows weak ; the unused faculty 
atrophies. Brother Lawrence, who taught us 
so much about practicing the presence of God, 
was a very good man, but he lost half of his 
saintliness when he made up his mind to live 
as if there were nobody else but God and Brother 
Lawrence in the world. The monk in Long- 
fellow's ''Legend Beautiful" wanted to tarry 
in his cell in communion with his Lord, 
but God told him to go out and feed the beg- 
gars. 

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* 'Should he who, wrapped in silent ecstasy 
Of divinest self -surrender,— 
Should he slight his radiant guest, 
Slight this vision celestial, for a crowd of ragged, 
Bestial beggars at the convent gate?" 

And Grod said: 

*'Do thy duty, that is best; 
Leave unto the Lord the rest," 

and when he came back the divine visitor said 
he would not have stayed had the monk refused 
to go. Here the thought comes out again, 
If we will but obey His voice we can leave the 
rest to Him. He will attend to the growth 
and we would find ourselves growing more rap- 
idly if we thought less about character and 
more about duty. If we thought less about 
being somebody and more about doing some- 
thing for somebody, we would come nearer 
being the body the Lord wants us to be. 

Dear child of God, are you growing? Have 
you got a larger heart and a purer spirit than 
you had last year? Are you living nearer the 
Master now than then? Is your delight in the 
law of the Lord and are you meditating therein 
day and night? Are you taking time to be holy 
while the world rushes on? Are you saying 
each morning, '*What can I do to-day for 
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Christ?" We have been considering the lilies, 
how they grow. Let us then say: ''My life too 
shall be one of growth, until like the lily's pure 
and unstained calyx the beauty of holiness 
shall crown it." And while the lily dies we 
shall go on from beauty unto beauty and from 
glory unto glory, for ''it doth not yet appear 
what we shall be." 



46 



**T7i6 night is far spent, the day is at hand; let tis 
therefore cast off the works of darkness and let us 
put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly as 
in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness^ not in 
impurity and wantonness, not in strife and envying. 
But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no 
PROVISION FOR THE FLESH, to fulfil the lusts thereof, ^^ 
— St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, Chapter 13. 



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HOW NOT TO GROW 
**Make no provision for the flesh." — Rom. 13:14. 

WE HAVE been considering the lilies of 
the field, how they grow; we have 
discovered that there is a law of 
growth, and the same law — a continuity of the 
law, the scientist would say — in both the 
natural and spiritual world; we have dwelt 
briefly upon some of the conditions of Christian 
growth and I wonder if it wouldn't be well now 
for a while to consider the Christian, lioiu he 
does not groio. 

When a plant is once supplied with the 
proper means of nourishment the chief concern 
of the horticulturist is not an endeavor to make 
it grow — in fact, such is not his business at all 
— but it is to see that all obstacles to growth 
are taken out of the way and everything eradi- 
cated that would in any way hinder growth, 
thus making ifc possible for the plant to come 
to perfection in its own time and way. Every 
living thing, in the natural world, to thrive 
must be fed. This is true of plant life and it 
is true of animal life. If it is not fed it will die. 
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In fact it will die anyhow. Plant and animal 
life at the most is but ephemeral. The wiseacres 
tell us they have all but discovered eternal life 
such as may endure with us in the body. Yes, 
*'all but," but who'd want such an eternal life if 
they did find it? We are wont to say, in fact 
we said it in the previous message, that if the 
proper environment be furnished it is natural 
for living organisms to live and grow ; without 
controverting anything we there said, we now 
intend to state what after all is really true, 
that in spite of such nourishment it is natural 
for such organism to deteriorate and die. As 
another has said, *^We are wont to imagine 
that nature is full of life ; in reality it is full of 
death." Man with all his strength is but a 
frail and daily dying creature. 

But there is something else in man besides 
the material. To him of all creatures was 
given the privilege, yea, rather the necessity of 
living forever, in the sense of existence. This 
belongs to the spiritual nature of every man. 
Because he is a spiritual being, he must go on, 
either in heaven or in hell. This spiritual 
nature is by generation sinful. ''Man is born 
in sin and shapen in iniquity. " He enters life 
with the sinful principle as sole controller of his 
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being. This nature we are accustomed to say 
has a deathward tendency. This is true, but 
in a sense only, — unless regenerate, it involves 
the soul in spiritual and eternal death, but 
even in the lost world that nature itself is very 
much alive indeed. We speak, as does the 
Scriptures, of the unregenerate as being dead; 
and they are dead — *'She that liveth in pleasure 
is dead while she liveth" — although it is im- 
portant to notice that Scripture nowhere 
teaches that the spiritual nature as just con- 
ceived is ever dead in any man's life, save the 
believer's in glory. You say, ''How are you 
using that word, spiritual?" In the sense now 
that all people, even the devil, are spiritual 
beings. In fact, the biggest evidence that an 
unregenerate man is dead is the liveliness of 
his wicked spiritual nature. 

This nature Paul calls the ''old man." This 
suggests the question of the new man. The 
new man is Christ, and when in regeneration 
the new man enters, He brings His nature with 
Him and of course another kind of life. "He 
that hath the Son hath life." Every child of 
God has therefore two natures, an old human 
nature and a new divine nature. 

Does regeneration mean a changed nature? 
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Yes, if by nature is meant the individual, for 
the Christian is most certainly a changed man ; 
but the matter will appear much simpler if we 
adhere to the Scriptural representation, which 
seems to be, not that of a changed but of an 
added nature. Peter tells us in his second 
epistle, the first chapter and fourth verse, that 
we have been ''made partakers of the divine 
nature." 

I have been pained to read in a religious 
journal that reaches more young people than 
any other in the world, words like these : 

''What a glorious change from the old life 
into the new! 'former things have passed 
away' ; the old nature with its cravings and its 
power is gone, for with the new birth comes a 
new nature and he who has experienced the 
regenerating work of the Holy Spirit is dead to 
the old nature just as the butterfly is dead to 
the grub nature that ruled it when a cata- 
pillar. ' ' 

That is not true, and many a child of God has 
found himself many times in doubt and real 
distress because he has failed to appreciate the 
real truth of the matter. Thinking either that 
regeneration meant instantaneous death to the 
old nature, or that a change was then begun 
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that meant a speedy eradication of that nature, 
he is surprised to find it manifesting itself with 
its old lustings after eyil when he thought it 
dead and gone, and unsuspectingly he yields 
himself to the subtle whispering of the evil one 
that he never was born again, and discouraged 
abandons himself to sin or seeks another regen- 
eration, merely to go through the same experi- 
ence, unhappy himself and a hindrance to 
others by his weak and Christ-dishonoring life. 
The truth is, the old man continues to breathe; 
nor does he sign a quit claim to the soul when 
the new man enters, but a lively spiritual con- 
flict ensues which continues with some degree 
of intensity, I am inclined to think — it does 
with me — is the testimony of Scripture and 
experience, until He shall come in glory to 
^'change our vile body that it may be fashioned 
like unto his glorious body" (Phil. 3:21). 
What we need is to put on the whole armor of 
God and keep it on and keep the old man 
under, as Paul did, through the all-conquer- 
ing strength of the new man, and thank God 
for a victory that's easy when we do. 

You now see the difference between life in 
the natural world and in the spiritual — the one 
is bound to die ; the other is bound to live, and 
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yet in a sense the law of death is universal, for 
even in the spiritual world the liveliness of the 
old man is but the sign of a death more real 
than any the natural world ever knew. 

In order to become thoroughly acquainted 
with the old nature, that we may recognize it 
and be on our guard against it, it might be well 
to see by what other names it is called. Paul, 
we have seen, calls it the ''old man." We 
also read of it as the ''natural man," "the 
flesh," and Paul identifies the flesh with him- 
self. He says, "In me, that is in my flesh, 
dwelleth no good thing" (Eom. 7:18). 
"Flesh," says Mr, Meyer, "is Me-ism." 
Flesh, as used by Paul, is the element of self 
in a man, the sinful human nature, and not 
the material element of the human body. It is 
the self-life, the carnal life. This, it has been 
noted, inheres in the child of God as well as 
in the unregenerate, and alas ! in some of His 
children it predominates over the Christ-life, 
robs the soul of its beauty, and becomes to 
them the cause of much sorrow and spiritual 
darkness. 

Now you will notice that while Paul calls 
this element the "natural man," he speaks of 
the new or divine nature as the spiritual, and 
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while bearing in mind the previous discussion 
and remembering that all men and demons 
even are spiritual beings, it will be best here- 
after to observe Paul's distinction, for in a very 
distinct sense he only is spiritual who has the 
Spirit of God indwelling and filling him. 

Now we have already seen that life, in order 
to growth, must be nourished. Each nature 
craves its own peculiar diet. I stood in a dark 
cellar the other day where some potatoes had 
been poured upon the floor, and although old 
and shriveled the life was still there and across 
the floor during a portion of the day the sun 
threw a heavy ray of its life-giving light and 
every sprout was creeping in that direction to 
bathe itself in its life-giving element. 

A luxuriant growth or a healthy organ is 
conditioned wholly by a correspondence with 
proper environment. Do you want the Christ- 
life, the new man, to flourish? We have seen 
some of the conditions of such growth. Or do 
you want the self -life, the old man, to thrive? 
Then simply see that his appetites are satisfied. 
But let us see what Paul says about it. In the 
13th chapter of Eomans and the 14th verse he 
says, ''But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and 
Qiialce no provision for the fleshy to fulfill the lusts 
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thereof." The old man is a determined char- 
acter and purposes to control the reins of every 
believer's being and Paul seems to be clearly- 
decided that there is but one avenue of escape, 
one preventive against the successes of his 
undertaking, and that is starvation. ''Make 
no provision for the flesh to gratify the appe- 
tites thereof." In the original, that means, ''If 
you know what he likes, don't give him any of 
it." Is it any wonder we have so many dwarfs 
in the Christian life, people who have passed 
from death unto life and then have left the 
spiritual nature to starve, while the life that 
ought to be devoted to its culture is consumed 
in ministering to the flesh. 

Some time ago a poor woman who lived in a 
basement room in New York City was missed 
for several days, and when her neighbors 
knocked at her door they found it locked and 
upon prying it open they saw the woman lying 
on the floor with the life of her body slowly 
ebbing away. There was neither fire, nor fuel, 
nor furniture, nor food in the place, and there 
in that great city of so much wealth she was 
slowly starving to death. You say that was 
very sad. Yes, but I can tell you something 
sadder than that. It's sometimes pretty hard 



t)ow mot to (Brow 



for a poor woman to get enough bread for the 
body, but there are those in whose soul the life 
of God exists and though surrounded with 
every provision for its health they are making 
provision for the flesh only, and if you could 
pry open the door of that inner house where 
the soul is and there see what God sees you 
would find a heart without prayer or love, 
with but little faith and flickering hope and 
in it a soul that is starving for the bread of 
life. Dear child, which nature are you nour- 
ishing? What are the strongest things in your 
life, the spiritual or the natural; Christ or the 
world? 

Now I'm not going to enumerate for you 
those things upon which the self-life thrives. 
If I did, I'd never get through. Paul began it 
once, and as if it were a hopeless task, he fin- 
ished up with an "et cetera." After telling 
the Galatian Christians how they might be kept 
from fulfilling the lusts of the flesh he begins 
to enumerate some of those things in which the 
self-life delights. It's an awful list of ugly 
sins, and if we were to fill out the ''and such 
like" with which he ends we would find it to 
include a good many not so ugly and some in 
fact, which many, at least nominal Christians, 
57 



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have deemed altogether harmless. Eead the 
list for yourself and then out of your own 
experience see if you can in any wise fill up 
the ''and such like." Possibly some sorrow 
has come into your life, and not able to under- 
stand the ministry of affliction you've been 
living with a bitter feeling toward God. The 
evil one has whispered to you that God has been 
unkind, and although you've read Romans 
8:28 you've preferred to listen to the subtle 
whisperings of the enemy and you are 
feeding the old man to-day because you are 
failing to trust God who has been kind and 
loving if you only understood. Possibly 
it was the rising of an angry passion and you 
let your temper slip, and you've known all 
these days and weeks and months and years 
that you ought to ask the other's pardon, but 
your pride has been in the way and you haven't 
done it and you've been feeding the self -life all 
this while. There has come into your life a 
question about the rightness or wrongness of 
certain things and you have continued to do 
them, though doubtful about their legitimacy 
or propriety. But Paul says, ''Whatsoever is 
not of faith is sin." If there is any practice 
in my life concerning which I am in doubt, 
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until that doubt shall have disappeared, it is 
my solemn duty to put it away until God tells 
me unmistakably that I may take it up again; 
and if I am continuing in that which is not of 
faith but of doubt, I am feeding the carnal 
nature and not the divine. You were reading 
a novel that the world had gone mad over, and 
as you read there came stealing into your mind 
unholy visions and something, or somebody 
rather, for it was the Holy Spirit, told you to 
lay it aside for it was not wholesome for a pure 
hearted child, but it was fascinating and you 
continued to the end. You were making pro- 
vision for the flesh. I could tell you more 
about a certain man, but this much by way of 
illustration: He was purchasing a pair of 
shoes. After one or two of plainer style the 
dealer fitted a most handsome pair upon him. 
They were comfortable and beautiful, but as 
the man put his foot out with the shoe upon 
it, he discovered something and he said, "Harry 
Field, you can't have that shoe." It was not 
in the shoe, but in himself the something was 
discovered. It would have been all right for you 
possibly to wear that shoe, but it would have 
been all wrong for him to wear it. It may 
seem a little thing but it was infinitely better 
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Zbc ©rowiuG Cbrtstian 



for him to wear the plainer pair than to make 
provision for the self -life every time he saw the 
finer pair npon his feet. 

Dear child of God, which nature are yon 
nourishing? What is it in your life that is 
withering and blasting a character that other- 
wise might be strong and beautiful and lovely? 
I beg of you in God's name, Ptit it atvay! 
For although it may seem a little thing it is 
nourishing a carnal growth that will hinder 
your spiritual development and make your life 
but a poor excuse for what God would have you 
be. Of one thing you may be sure. Every- 
thing that ministers to the self -life is wrong for 
the child of God, and upon all that carnality 
mentioned by Paul, upon all that reviewed a 
moment ago and upon many things else under 
certain conditions you can write that one little 
and woe-entailing word of three letters and 
know that whatever is hindering the growth of 
your soul into the fullness of the measure of 
God's thought for you, it is sin. Sin is the 
worm in the heart of the tree — the sturdy oak 
that defied the wind and the winter's blast, 
but whose leaves withered and whose branches 
dropped off and whose roots dried up when it 
gave that little worm a place in its heart. Child, 
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what is it that is spoiling your life? Put it away. 

But now some one says: ''The old man is so 
strong within me, how can I subdue him? I've 
nourished him so long that he has become my 
master. His lustings are so strong and his 
crayings so fierce it is so very hard to deny 
them. And then you spoke about starvation, 
which seems to imply a gradual process. Can 
I not have release at once, or must I wait the 
long years through?" Yes, child, you must 
wait the long years through. Do not misun- 
derstand me ; I am not speaking of what God 
can or cannot do, but what the Word and 
universal experience proves He does do. Sanc- 
tification, whatever else it is not, is progressive. 
It is possible to be kept, if you will, from 
known sin, and yet sin is possibly more than 
you have recognized, and if you could see with 
the vision of God, in spite of all your sanctifi- 
cation, you might abhor yourself in dust and 
ashes; and it is yet possible that after your 
attainment unto what you thought the highest 
possible excellence, there will still await you in 
years to come the vision of something wrong 
which now you permit as right. 

But let us see if we cannot learn something 
more of what Paul means by ''making no pro- 
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Ube Growing Cbrtstlan 



vision for the flesh." Four words will, I 
think, help us in this matter. 

1. Critcifixion. Gal. 5:24, "They that are 
Christ's have crucified the flesh with its pas- 
sions and lusts.'' Notice, the verb is in the 
aorist, the past tense, and it is spoken of them 
that are Christ's. Now when did you crucify 
your flesh? Why, evidently when the blessed 
Christ Himself, in the likeness of sinful flesh, 
was nailed to the cross ; and so throughout the 
epistles the Christian is ideally considered as 
one who is dead and he is told in Eom. 6 :11 to 
"likewise" reckon himself dead indeed unto 
sin. "Likewise." Like what? Why, just as 
Christ in the likeness of sinful flesh was cruci- 
fied, so I being in union with Him was nailed 
there too and my self -life has been fixed to the 
cross. In this sense the self-life is dead. I 
dragged it there and drove the nail and said, 
"Thou shalt forever die." Between me and 
that old man with his lustings and his jeal- 
ousies and all his carnal cravings now stands 
the cross and I am henceforth to stand fast in 
the liberty wherewith Christ hath made me 
free. Oh, you who have crucified the fiesh— 
and you have if you are Christ's — think of it. 
It will help you. Eeckon yourselves dead. 
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t)ow Bot to (Brow 



Look upon those precious wounds and then 
into His dear face and say, '^My Christ, when 
you died, I died!" and, ''How shall I that am 
dead unto sin live any longer therein?" 

But you say, ''I must have something more.'' 
Yes, indeed you must. For you say, ''I find 
the old man obtruding himself and the lustings 
of his nature within me in spite of what I will 
should be his utter destruction." This brings 
us to the second word. 

2. Mortification. Eom. 8:13. *'If ye 
through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the 
body ye shall live." Here is the flesh in the 
believer recognized as alive. To mortify, liter- 
ally means ''to cause to decay," and unlike 
crucifixion, which is more of an act, this word 
has in it the idea of process. It is certainly 
true that we are to deal with our dispositions 
summarily. "Let him that stole steal no 
more." If the eye offends it is to be plucked 
out ; if it is the hand, it is to be cut off. But 
suppose one has a fever? The surgeon's knife is 
useless here. We are now considering sin as a 
vicious organism and are dealing with its appe- 
tites, and there must be administered an inner 
antiseptic. In other words, to become perfect 
at once is a simple impossibility. And what is 
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that antiseptic? Eead the verse again. *'If ye 
through the Spirit do mortify" — it is the 
blessed Spirit of Jesus, the Holy Spirit indwell- 
ing and infilling, that lusteth against the flesh, 
despoils the old man of his power and subdues 
the self -life while the Christ-life goes on to vic- 
tory and to beauty. But I know some of you 
are asking: ''Must I, in order to my spiritual 
growth, always have my attention applied to 
that which is diseased and repulsive? Does 
making no provision for the flesh mean that I 
must be forever dealing with the flesh?" Our 
third word will help us here. 

3. Transformation, 2 Cor. 3:18. ''Behold- 
ing as in a glass the gtory of the Lord we are 
changed (transformed) into the same image 
from glory to glory as by the Spirit of the 
Lord." How is growth into Christlikeness 
produced? Not by morbid self-analysis and 
perpetual anxiety about this inner devitiliza- 
tion of the flesh that is going on. This would 
be to rob one's experience of all its sweetness; 
but by beholding the beauty of Him. We 
must remember the lesson of the lily. And 
will you notice that as the mortification was 
through the Spirit so also is the transformation 
*'by the Spirit of the Lord." Speaking of the 
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Holy Spirit, Jesus said, ^'He shall glorify me," 
and this process of the disintegration of the 
flesh and transformation of the soul. He carries 
on by revealing Jesus unto us, and while you 
are beholding Him and so knowing Him more 
intimately and therefore loving Him more 
dearly, self dies and Christ lives within. 

And now you say: ''This is glorious; such an 
experience I covet. Will the Holy Spirit do 
this for me?" This brings us to the last 
word. 

4. Dedication. While I believe growth is 
gradual, there is a condition or position of the 
soul conducive to its health and therefore to 
its acceleration, and into this position I believe 
we may and ought to come at once and in a 
definite way. That is the position of the sur- 
rendered life. Dedicating myself to God and 
saying: ''Blessed indwelling Spirit of Christ, 
fill me and let the filling be deep : I want to 
be just as much like Jesus as it is possible for 
man to be. I do give myself to Thee — rule 
my entire being, subdue and cast out and lead 
me in the way of life and beauty and power." 



65 



*'J am the true vine, and my Father is the husband- 
man. Every branch in me that beareth not 
FRUIT He taketh away : and every branch that 

BEARETH FRUIT, He PURGETH IT, THAT IT MAY BRING 

FORTH MORE FRUIT. Now ye are clean through the 
ivord which I have spoken unto you. Abide in me, 
and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of 
itself except it abide in the vine; no more can ye ex- 
cept ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the 
branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the 
same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye 
can do nothing. If a man abide not in me, he is cast 
forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather 
them, and cast them irito the fire, and they are burned. 
If ye abide in me, and my ivords abide in you, ye shall 
ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. 
Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much 
fruit; so shall ye be my disciples,'^ — St. John's Qos- 
pel, Chapter 15. 



Hrrestet) S)evelopment 



AEKESTED DEVELOPMENT AND 
SPIEITUAL DWAEEAGE 

"Every branch in me that beareth not fruit He 
taketh away : and every branch that beareth f iniit 
He purge th it that it may bring forth more fruit." 
—John 15 : 2. 

HOWEYEE much the eyolutionists have 
disagreed with the more conservative 
thinkers they have agreed among them- 
selves that-in the production of man a sentence 
of suspension has been written upon the law of 
development in the physical realm. Man as 
an animal is God's noblest work in the phys- 
ical universe. 

But if what science tells us is true, it is to be 
regretted that many of his powers have not 
only been arrested in development but have 
actually deteriorated from what they once 
were. Yet how little is the sadness connected 
with such a thought to be compared with that 
sadness which comes from the thought of the 
arrested development of a human soul. 

In many respects other animals surpass man ; 
the horse is stronger, the deer is fleeter, the 
eagle can see farther, while man's sense of smell 
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and sound is almost as nothing in comparison 
with many of the lower vertebrata. But though 
all this is true man is more than compensated 
by additional and higher powers. Man is an 
intelligence and if he cannot run with the deer 
he can reach him with the bullet; if he cannot 
see with the eagle he can surpass the eagle's 
eye with the telescope or the microscope ; if he 
is weaker than a horse he can control the beast 
with a bit and bridle ; but what of all that ever 
comes to man can be of any compensation or 
comfort for a dwarfed and degenerated soul? 

I have seen people whose bodies have had a 
stunted growth and we call them dwarfs, and 
I have thought that were not so hard to bear, 
but oh, to have a dwarfed soul ! And there is 
even something sadder than that — to watch 
the waning of the faculties ; to have the vision 
grow dimmer, the sound grow fainter, nay, but 
worse, even to have the mind grow weaker! 
Yes, I could even think of my body shrinking 
in stature from year to year, and terrible as 
such a thing would be, I think I might even 
bear that. But oh, to have a mind that is 
slowly forgetting God, a character that is slowly 
losing its beauty, a spirit that is losing its 
glory, a heart that is losing its love, a soul that 
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Hrre8tc5 Bevelopment 



is smaller now than it was a year ago, is a 
thought that makes one shudder ! 

Look now at the text we have chosen. Two 
things are written there : 

(1) Every branch that beareth fruit the Father 
purgeth that it may bear more fruit, and (2) 
every branch that beareth not fruit He taketh 
away. Notice for a moment the fruit-bearing 
branch. What a restful thought; no worrying 
about the fruit; no responsibility, except just 
to keep in close touch, to abide in the vine and 
receive its life, which in the very nature of 
things must bear fruit of itself. If we would 
only appreciate this thought of our own noth- 
ingness and our utter and necessary dependence 
upon the vine, I am sure that everything would 
come right in every moment of our life. 

And now about the purging. It is the vine- 
dresser's process of pruning his vines, with 
which I presume all are familiar. There are 
certain parts of the plant that must be cut 
away in order to its best development from a 
fruit-bearing standpoint. There is such a 
thing as superfluous growth, because it is 
growth in the wrong direction — the suckers 
that grow on] the farmer's corn, the water 
sprouts that shoot out from the stem of a tree 
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and consume the sap that ought to go on to 
feed the ripening fruit. And so with the 
vines, many of the branches, the same in 
nature with the vine, run to wood and leaves 
and are not only worthless in themselves but 
hindrances to other branches that are growing 
fruit. So far as leafage and appearances go 
such branches may seem quite as promising as 
any, but a little inspection will prove them to 
be wasting the life of the vine in a mere 
tendency to size, and often when they seem to 
be doing grandly the vinedresser's knife is 
ruthlessly applied and the fine appearance is 
cut away just because it is a cumbrance to the 
vine and cast aside to wither and be burned. 

Just so it is in the spiritual world ; there can 
be little fruitfulness without the use of the 
sharp knife. You will notice that it is the 
branch that is bearing a little fruit that is 
purged of its worthless parts that it may bear 
more fruit. In order to the richest growth in 
grace and best results in Christian experience 
there must be the cutting off of every encum- 
bering growth and the purging away of all that 
is unholy in the life. 

But as the sprout cut away is only a hin- 
drance and not essentially different from the 
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HcresteD development 



branch it is forced to leave, how appropriate, in 
closest keeping with the analogy, to use this 
Scripture in the first place with a reference to 
those things which might be deemed lawful 
but by hosts of earnest Christians are consid- 
ered questionable. Paul, speaking of such 
things said, in 1 Cor. 6:12, ''AH things are 
lawful unto me but all things are not expedi- 
ent." And why not expedient? To this Paul 
gives the most thorough answer, answering it 
from the standpoint of a man's God, of his 
neighbor and of himself. 

1. As concerns God. 1 Cor. 10:31. Inex- 
pedient because of the danger of misrepresent- 
ing Him. By such indulgence we often sanc- 
tion a tone of Christianity lower than His 
approval warrants, and thus we are injuring 
Him and the cause that is dear to Him. Con- 
cerning the eating of questionable meats, a 
subject of discussion in his day, Paul closed 
his advice by saying, '^ Whether ye eat or drink 
or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of 
God." If you can conscientiously ask God's 
blessing on your undertaking and His presence 
to attend you as you enter upon it, such a thing 
may be deemed right for you to do, but unless 
in that pleasure or that business the Holy 
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Spirit can glorify Jesus it is wrong for you to 
participate. Do you call that narrow? I call 
it exceedingly broad. It is possible to become 
an instrument of unrighteousness in any amuse- 
ment, even though most innocent, but there is 
a wide range of pleasure in which, when 
entered upon in the Spirit of Christ, the very 
beauty and glory of the Son of God will be 
manifested to the world. In any undertaking 
I should first want to know, ''Will this please 
God?" Calling upon one of his parishioners a 
certain pastor inquired concerning the daughter 
who was away at college, and the mother said, 
*'I was just reading a letter from her^as you 
came in; part of it will interest you." And 
she read a part of it where the daughter was 
telling her mother of a dance that was to be 
given by her class ; all her friends were going 
and she wanted to go herself very much 
indeed, but she knew her mother did not 
approve of it and for her sake she was going to 
stay away. ''Well," remarked the pastor, 
*' that's very beautiful of her indeed; you must 
love her very much." "Love her!" replied 
the mother, as a tear came into her eye, "I 
wish she was here now, that I might put my 
arms around her and tell her how much I love 
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arreste& Bevelopmcnt 



her." In some such way as that I would like 
God to feel toward me, and I am sure He will 
if I am trying to walk ''worthy of the Lord 
unto all pleasing." 

2. As concerns our neighbor. 1 Cor. 8:9. 
Inexpedient says Paul, ''lest by any means my 
liberty becomes a stumbling block to them that 
are weak." We all know what that means. 
Although I might engage in this thing without 
any harm to myself, I am making it possible 
for others to do it who are not so discerning or 
self-controlled as I. I will not do that which 
may bring ruin to another. "Destroy not 
with thy meat him for whom Christ died," says 
Paul. Said a young man who had inherited a 
passion for liquor: "I came near breaking my 
pledge last night. The smell of wine was so 
tempting that I could hardly resist it, but just 

as I was about to yield I heard Miss 

refuse. This gave me courage. I watched 
her all evening and said to myself, 'If she 
drinks, I will.' I was hoping and yet fearing 
that she would, but as often as she was asked 
she declined and so all unconscious to herself 
she pulled me safely through." What a pity 
had that young lady been without conviction 
concerning the use of intoxicants in society. 
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If by any sacrifice that I can make I can save 
my weaker brother, then I v/ant to be big 
enough, I want to be unselfish enough to save 
him by my self-denial. Don't you? It's not 
so much a question of inherent rightness or 
wrongness as it is a question of how big or 
how little you are going to be. 

3. As concerns myself; and this is more 
to the point in keeping with the analogy. 
(a) 1 Cor. 6 :12. Inexpedient, says Paul, are some 
things, ''lest I be brought under their power." 
^'Oh," said a man, when cautioned against the 
use of morphine,^ 'I take but little at a time 
and can stop when I choose." ''Suppose you 
try for six months," said his friend. At the 
end of six months, after the fiercest struggle of 
his life, he thanked his friend for his advice 
and confessed that he did not realize how 
greatly the habit held him under its control. 
When once under the power of a thing, no 
matter what it is, that thing for you is an evil 
in your life. 

(b) 1 Cor. 10:23. Inexpedient, says Paul, 
* 'because they do not edify." While the pri- 
mary reference is here doubtless to the edifica- 
tion of others, it is equally and even more true 
of the one who engages in them. And this is 
74 



arreste5 development 



what we have had especially in mind from the 
beginning — they hinder growth and fill the 
church with barren, fruitless lives. 

A prominent Christian worker once said, "I 
never knew a Christian that began to dance 
who was not soon missed from the prayer-meet- 
ing." Having loved this present world, 
Demas-like, they soon forsake the things of 
God. It seems there is an incompatibility 
between the two which experience seems to 
prove will not abide each other. Such Chris- 
tians have lost their flavor ; their fruit has been 
drying up , something has been stealing away 
their strength and if the pruning process is 
not soon begun something serious will occur. 
And then say what we will, the lovely charac- 
ters of this world, in whose lives the very 
beauty and gentleness of Jesus have shone with 
resplendent glory, have not been those whose 
chief sources of amusement were found in the 
giddy, venturesome circle of a Christ-ignoring 
world. 

Dr. Parkhurst's rule is a good one. Listen 
to it: ''The prime question in allowing myself 
any indulgence is whether such indulgence in 
any way unfits me to be a Christian in my 
thoughts, deeds and devotions; whether I 
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return with an eye just as quick to detect the 
divine presence and a heart that Just as 
promptly and sensitively feels the helpful 
strength issuing from the pages of God's 
Word; whether the diversion helps to open or 
tends to close the closet of prayer and whether 
it tends to fill or clip the wings of my devo- 
tion." 

(c) Eomans 14: 23. And then as if our duty 
concerning such matters might not in some 
particular instance be sufficiently plain, even 
with such guiding principles before us, Paul 
sets forth a simple direction that will always 
point a man to the right side if he has the least 
desire to do the will oi God* He says, ''If you 
doubt, don't do it." "Whatever is not of faith 
is sin." I had preached a sermon on consecra- 
tion and had quoted those lines of Miss Haver- 
gaPs, ''Take my silver and my gold, not a mite 
would I withhold," and the next day a letter 
Avas received from a good and well-meaning 
Christian woman telling of help received from 
the sermon, but saying she hoped she would 
next see me without the gold cuff -buttons I was 
wearing. Well, the gold cuff -buttons did not 
seem to be wrong for me, but I can conceive of a 
condition of mind where they would be wrong. 



HrrcsteJ) development 



A lady came to me really in great perplexity of 
mind concerning her sealskin coat. "Is it wrong 
for me to wear it?" she asked. *'Yes," I said; 
"wrong for you." "And why for me?" she 
said. "Because," said I, "of the question in 
your own mind." It is so with amusements; 
the minute a doubt comes into your mind 
about their inherent wrong or about their expe- 
diency put them out of your life ; in time they 
may become right again because the doubt has 
disappeared, but "he that doubteth," says 
Paul, speaking of questionable meats, "is con- 
demned if he eat." 

But the question with us thus far has not 
been so much one of wrongness but of inexpe- 
diency, not alone because such things are so 
often the means of injury to others, but also 
of keeping that which is higher and holier out 
of our own lives. If such things stand between 
you and your God, between you and the beauty 
of holiness, then heaven itself can witness no 
nobler sight than to see you resolutely and 
calmly divest yourself of these lower things that 
you may be clothed upon with the higher. 

You tell me it is hard to part with so much 
that has really become a part of your life. 
Yes, but there is to be no loss except for gain. 
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What was it the poet told ns about reaching 
higher things upon stepping stones manufac- 
tured out of our own dead selves? 

As the husbandman comes into the vineyard 
with his keen sharp instrument the apparently 
flourishing vine shrinks and says, ''Why must 
I give up this beautiful leafage, this luxuriant 
growth in which I so much delight?" And' 
the vinedresser replies to the vine and says, 
"This rank growth is not only superfluous but 
it will hinder your fruitfulness, and unless you 
allow it to be cut away you will be found in 
time a barren and worthless vine fit only to be 
cut down and consumed in the fire"; and then 
the sharp knife begins its ruthless work and 
though the vine bleeds for a while the vintage 
always justifies the separation. 

Let us not shrink from this cutting away. 
Let us say; ''Come, Thou Spirit of the 
beautiful Christ, Thou kno west what is best; 
in Thy hands we place our lives ; make them 
beautiful in Thy sight, and as Thou hast made 
us free to act, tell us what to do, which way 
Thou wouldst have us go, what Thou wouldst 
have us surrender and by Thy grace which 
Thou dost freely give we will do it all"; and 
that will be the hour. 

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HrresteD development 



''When the tree of life will burst into flower, 
And rain at our feet a glorious dower 
Of something grander than ever we knew." 

But the purging pi;ocess does not end with 
merely questionable things. As the vine must 
be cleansed of all plant-devouring insects, and 
all parasitical growths that twine themselves 
about the vine and suck its very life away, and 
of the little worm that bores its way into the 
very heart, so also is it true of the Christian. 
Alas ! that so many harbor some secret sin in 
their heart — it may be only a little one as they 
think, but it is eating out their very life and 
making it barren of all that is pleasing to God. 
Have you such a sin? Put it away, and see 
what God will do for you. You have doubt- 
less read of Mammoud who destroyed a costly 
idol he was tempted to spare, and how when 
he struck it, it was hollow and bursting rained 
at his feet a whole shower of diamonds and 
precious stones. It will be so with you. 
Trench has written about it in his poetry: 

'Thou, too, heaven's commissioned warrior to cast 

down each idol throne 
In thy heart's profaned temple, make this faithful 
deed thine own. 
Let descend the faithful blow ; 
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From their wreck and from their ruin first will thy 
true riches flow. 

Thou shalt lose thy life and find it, thou shalt boldly 
cast it forth, 

And then, back again receiving, know it in its end- 
less worth." 

But suppose the vine should dictate to its 
dresser and having the power should say, ''No, 
I cannot, I will not part with these things." 
You know what that would mean — Barrenness, 
In Brazil there is a plant called the ''Matador" 
or "Murderer." It is a poisonous parasite that 
fixes itself upon the most vigorous trees of the 
forest and creeping upward winds its arm-like 
tendrils in close embrace about the tree until 
at last.it shoots its beautiful and poisonous 
flowery head above the strangled summit as if 
in triumph, for it has hilled the tree. Can 
this be true of a Christian? What was the 
second thing written in the text? "Every 
branch in me that beareth not fruit. He taketh 
away," and in the sixth verse it is said they are 
"cast into the fire and burned." It seems to 
read, either fruit bearing or burning. What 
does that mean? I do not know. I know 
what I think it means. I know what the great 
schools of theology have thought it means. I 
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know they differ altogether in their opinions, 
and I know that the really wise man is the man 
who knows that he does not know it all, and I 
know that in the light of these words I would 
not dare to willfully persist in known sin. 
There have been men, and some of them for 
whom my heart has bled, who have done such 
a thing and God only knows the result. There 
is in my mind an instance of this, of which for 
reasons I must speak reverently and with care 
— a man who for almost a score of years occu- 
pied a place of responsibility and usefulness in 
the Master's vineyard as superintendent of a 
flourishing Sabbath School. He was apparently 
an earnest Christian and much devoted to the 
work. In connection with his business there 
came to him an opportunity for making consid- 
erable money which, however, incurred an 
evident violation of the Sabbath day. He felt 
the thing to be wrong, and yet he yielded not 
only the first Sunday, but the next, and then 
the next, and so on. Naturally he began to 
lose interest in his Christian work. It no 
longer yielded him the same joy, nor was he 
unconscious of the lack of something that 
formerly had helped him and made his influ- 
ence strong. By and by he resigned as super- 
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intendent; then his church attendance grew 
irregular and after a while it ceased altogether. 
He gave himself up to making money, appar- 
ently lost all interest in the things of God, and 
a few years ago passed away seemingly uncon- 
cerned about his own future. 

I am not even going to suggest the possibility 
of a regenerate man being lost ; it may be that 
such branches were never really in the Vine, or 
it may be that the burning is but the drapery 
in the analogy and used to complete the 
imagery in keeping with what really transpires 
in a vineyard, and such branches because of 
their unfruitf alness have been laid aside in the 
sense in which some have interpreted Paul's 
words in 1 Cor. 9 : 27, where he says he endeav- 
ors to keep the self -life crucified, ''lest that by 
any means when I have preached to others I 
myself should be a castaway." Not that Paul 
was in any danger of being eventually cast away 
into that pit of burning where there shall be 
weeping and gnashing of teeth; not that any 
niche in God's gallery can be empty of its 
intended statue; not that any power on earth, 
above it or beneath it can tear one lamb from 
the Shepherd's bosom, but that the possibility 
was ever present with him of his heart being 
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set upon something displeasing to God, of his 
becoming ambitious for himself rather than 
for Christ, of the loss of influence through 
doubtful indulgence by reason of which his life 
would become barren and unfruitful and God 
would strip him of Ms power ^ and casting Mm 
aside luould give to another Ms place of service 
and Ms crown of rejoiciiig. 

It is this thought that has been before me 
throughout all I have said. Is yours an 
arrested development? Can you recall a time 
of deeper interest in the Master's work ; a time 
of greater pleasure in his service ; a time when 
you could rest your head at night with the 
sweet consciousness that that day had counted 
something for Jesus — possibly more than a 
week or month or year counts now? Was there 
a time when you felt the avenues of your soul 
coursing with the rich peace and satisfaction of 
Christ? And are all these things of the past? 
Something is wrong somewhere, and if you will 
but cast yourself down before Him He will put 
His finger on the spot and show you where 
it is. 

I want to be very tender just at this point. 
This is not to denounce your sin as manifested 
in any particular form, but my God in heaven. 



XTbc ©rowing Cbristian 



what an awful thing it would be to be forced to 
feel that Christ has no further use for me 
because I have thwarted Him and withstood 
Him and pulled away from Him and have been 
now so long a proud and self -concerned pro- 
fessed child of His, that I am left to drag these 
weary years through and go up at last into His 
presence a dwarfed and stunted weakling! 
May heaven save us all from a thing like that ! 
Not very long ago we were preaching in a 
tent during a time of fierce and frequent 
storms. Several times the tent, a massive one 
with heavy center poles well stayed, blew down. 
One day driving into the country we saw a 
mighty monarch of the forest lying prostrate 
on the ground. It had gone down during the 
night. ''Well," said Mr. Weeden, my associ- 
ate, ''no wonder the old tent went down when 
a tree like that had to give up,'* But our 
surprise vanished when we came up and read 
the story of its downfall. It had been a mag- 
nificent tree, once tall and beautiful and 
strong, bearing its fruit in its season. The 
winds tried [to blow it down, but it struck its 
roots deeper in the soil and laughed at th« 
puny efforts of the storm. The sun tried to 
burn its foliage ; it dried up the soil and tried 
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to starve its roots ; the rains poured down as if 
they would drown it; the snows piled up 
around it as if they would freeze it or bury it, 
but the old tree grew on and prospered. But 
by and by the tree seemed to lose its spirit. 
Its leaves were not so fresh and green ; they 
withered early and came in fewer numbers each 
recurring year ; its fruit grew small and shriv- 
elled; its branches dropped off, many of them, 
and by and by another storm came, not so fierce 
as many it had met before, but the fibers had 
lost their strength and the once proud and 
defiant tree fell with a mighty crash. And 
when we came up to it we discovered that its 
huge trunk was all hollow and that for probably 
many years it had been scarcely more than the 
rim of a tree. The rest of the story is very 
brief. One unfortunate day a little worm ate 
its way into the heart of the tree, laid its eggs 
there and died. Soon there were a dozen 
worms, and from these came many more. Soon 
there were hundreds feeding upon the heart of 
the tree until they had eaten away nearly all its 
life and left it an easy prey to the storms that 
blew about it. 

Dear friend, the application is easy. God 
help us to make it each one for himself. Have 
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you been falling in the hour of temptation? 
Has your life been dry of late? ISTo buoyancy 
of spirit, no intimate fellowship with Jesus, no 
tear and no prayer. Ah, child, there was no 
salvation for the tree ; there is for you. The 
blessed Spirit of Christ, pure, strong and true 
is waiting to come in and He will bring His 
own health with Him and you shall no longer 
be the ''servant of sin" of any kind, but 
"yielding your members unto righteousness you 
shall have your fruit unto holiness." 

May God help us to put away that which is 
injurious and to put it away now; and for every 
wrong thing and for every inexpedient thing, 
which by His grace we lay down, we shall be 
made rich in Him for He will give us Himself 
in ever increasing measure until the very full- 
ness of God shall be ours and Christ shall be 
all in all, God grant it. 



Zbc QiQWB ot (5rowtb 



THE SIGXS OP GROWTH 

SOMEWHEEE I have read a beautiful little 
story which I can but imperfectly recall. 
It was entitled ''The Measuring Eod," 
and it was, in short, the account of a time at 
certain intervals when an angel of God came 
down to measure the spiritual growth of His 
people. He had a mysterious and beautiful 
rod against which the people were asked to 
come and stand, and when they took their 
place, the one after the other, a strange thing 
occurred. The stature of the measured one 
would either increase or decrease according to 
their spiritual condition as compared with the 
same at the angel's last visit. There were a 
great many surprises. Mrs. A., who was pres- 
ident of the Ladies' Aid and superintendent of 
the Infant Department and the leader in sev- 
eral of the other church undertakings and 
whom everybody thought would look exceed- 
ingly well under the rod, shrank away almost 
to nothing. But old Jerry, the cobbler, always 
stooping below his height, whom no one 
thought of save as they had some mending to 
be done, fairly blazed with a glow of glory 
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which the mysterious rod shed about him, as 
his deformity seemed to leave him while his 
stature increased above that of anybody in the 
village. There was one young lady there who 
knew she loved her Christ, but she was pain- 
fully conscious at that time of having been so 
often envious of another young lady's hand- 
somer garments than she herself could afford ; 
and of other things which at the time she had 
argued herself into conceding as nothing 
wrong, but which now in the presence of that 
heavenly rod smote her with a deep sense of 
guilt. She tried to hide herself among the 
crowd, thinking the angel might overlook her, 
but he seemed to kuow everyone by name and 
presently hers was called, and as she took her 
place it was just as she dreaded it would be, for 
though she stood on the tip of her toes trying 
to raise herself, she knew she was shrinking 
down. With tears in her eyes she besought 
the angel not to put the record down, but he 
said to her, with a kind and pitying smile, 
*' Daughter, the record must go down, for I 
must show it to the Master, but when I come 
again I'm sure it will be otherwise." She 
promised him it would and went back to live 
anew for Christ. I wonder how we of this 



TLbc QiQxxs ot (Browtb 



audience would fare if that angel with his rod 
were here to-day? 

There is something very impressive to me in 
that story as I ^recall it, for although it is but 
an innocent fiction, it is based on a tremendous 
truth, and always arouses the question within 
me, ''Am I or am I not growing in grace?" 
"Am I or am I not increasing in spiritual 
stature?" and then the query comes, ''Is there 
a way that I can arrive at any certain knowl- 
edge of my spiritual development, if such there 
be?" I cannot hear myself grow, for there is 
no whirr of machinery; I cannot see myself 
grow, for that which grows is invisible, and if 
it were not, all thorough growth is too slow to 
be watched. But there must be some mark, 
some outward manifestation to the world or 
inward evidence to myself that the life of Christ 
is prospering within my souL It is to this we 
wish to refer for a brief while at this place. If 
the Christian grows in grace as Peter would 
have him do, it ought to be that any of the 
graces in which he is supposed to grow, could 
be taken as the rod with which to measure his 
development ; for ideal growth above all things 
else is symmetrical. God would have us be a 
complete all-round Christian with every grace 
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of the new life developed so that from whatever 
side approached, the world will see something 
of the Christ-life within ns. 

We might take any of the fruits of the Spirit 
mentioned by Paul in Galatians, or by Peter 
in his epistle. We might take Faith and 
measure ourselves by that, for what stronger 
virtue than to cease from doubt and Job-like 
to believe in God even though He seem to slay 
you. We might take Submission, that heroic 
virtue that chooses just what God has chosen 
for you though it be the stony path and the 
bleeding heart. We might take Love, that 
divinest of graces, that always finds us helping 
somebody. We might take Humility ; the full 
corn in the ear always bends down. We might 
take these or any one of many others, but being 
confined of course by the very breadth of Chris- 
tian character to a somewhat limited test, I 
have selected four things, measuring rods so to 
speak, by which you may judge how much, if 
at all, you have been growing in grace. And I 
have been careful to select those things about 
which there can be no mistaken judgment. 
Oftentimes we think we are humbler and more 
loving and better than we really are ; but here 
are some things that will lead us to a pretty 
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safe conclusion concerning the height of our 
spiritual man. May God help us as we go 
along, in case we see we are lacking (and this 
doubtless will be true in some degree of us all), 
to earnestly covet, as the apostle prayed, to 
increase more and more as we go on from degree 
to degree toward the stature of the perfect 
man. 

1. In the first place, we shall mention a 
spiritual appetite; and we mean by that of 
course an appetite for spiritual things. A 
healthy man always has a good appetite, and 
health after all is the prime essential of growth ; 
but since the things of God are and always will 
be distasteful to the natural man, the very fact 
of your appetite for them is evidence of the 
health and growth of your spiritual man ; and 
since the appetites of these two natures are 
wholly antagonistic, their relative strength 
within you will quite readily determine your 
standing in the eyes of God and of the world as 
well. 

Let us be honest now. You tell me the 
things that are strongest in your life and I can 
give you a fair estimate of the stature of your 
spiritual man. Are you in the house of God on 
Sunday more for the sake of your profession 
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than for feasting your soul in the Avorship of 
God? The occasional, and very occasional, 
visit to the prayer-meeting, — is it for the sake 
of appearance, or if that sounds too harsh, let us 
say for duty's sake, and when sitting in these 
places does the mind play truant to the occa- 
sion and indulge itself in frequent excursions 
and excitements wherein you know from expe- 
rience an indulgence brings gratification 
stronger than you have ever experienced in 
waiting upon God? It was Hannah Whitehall 
Smith, I think, who wrote, 

**I love to steal awhile away 
From every cumbering care, 
And spend the hours of setting day 
In humble, grateful prayer." 

Do you really delight to do that, or do you 
prefer to steal away somewhere else and spend 
your evenings where God is all forgotten? The 
Psalmist said the man who had forsaken the 
wickedness of this world was a blessed man. 
He said, however, that his delight was in the 
law of the Lord and that in that law he was to 
be found meditating day and night; that he 
was like a tree planted by the rivers of water 
that bringetfe forth his fruit in his season. 
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What about your delight? How much real 
satisfaction and deep gratifying pleasure do you 
get from meditating in this Word? — or when 
you read it, providing you do, is it a perfunc- 
tory service, is it from the constraint of duty, a 
thing that you feel you ought to do rather than 
a thing you love to do? 

Come, friends, have you really learned to love 
Jesus? If you have, could you ever enter into 
any indulgence that could drive Him out of 
your thoughts? We are told to ''remember 
Him," and if we loved Him would this not be 
the natural thing to do? These are the words 
of a noble character whom I delight to think 
of as a friend. Said he: "I think very many 
times of the one I love best. When in the 
night I awake my first thought is of her ; and 
when early in the morning the sunrise comes 
stealing into my room, my first thought is of 
her, and constantly throughout the day my 
mind goes out to her. I think of all the sweet 
things she has said, of all the sweet and loving 
things she has done, and / do remember her." 
Do you think he would enjoy a separation from 
her? And if we really love Jesus, do you not 
think that before we went any place or gave 
ourselves to any indulgence we would first ask, 
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''Can I have Jesus with me in these things?" 
I recall the story of the young lady who wore 
a locket about her neck into which no one was 
permitted to look. But one day in an hour of 
serious sickness one of her most intimate 
friends was allowed to open the sacred orna- 
ment, and there she saw the words, ''Whom 
not having seen I love." All her life she had 
been remembering Him, thinking over sweet 
thoughts about Him, and need I tell you how 
marvelously like Him she had grown as her 
character ripened in its rare loveliness, while 
her friends wondered at it until they knew the 
secret? 

In my work as an evangelist I find scores of 
converts, especially among the young, who are 
perplexed about worldly amusements, and they 
come asking me if it is wrong to dance or to do 
so and so. I do not wonder at this, for as yet 
they are like those Christians to whom Paul 
speaks in the third chapter of First Corinthians, 
saying, "Brethren, I could not speak unto you 
as unto spiritual but as unto carnal, even as 
unto babes in Christ." In them the carnal 
nature was still predominate, and such things 
as were troubling the consciences of these 
young converts were the very things they cared 
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most to do ; but that you who have been for 
years in the Christian life should be concerned 
about those things is very sad indeed, for you 
have had time to develop a taste for better 
things, and if you have been a growing Chris- 
tian and have not been living all the while in 
the elementary stage of experience and are not 
babes in Christ, and therefore carnal, which is 
only another expression for the self -life, there 
will have been developed within you an appetite 
which will prove to be what Dr. Chalmers has 
called the '* expulsive power of a new affection. " 
Poor Henry Heine — we say poor because he 
was so very poor indeed — he worshiped what 
he thought was the beautiful, and the Venus 
de Milo, an armless, half -clad statue in the 
Louvre at Paris, he called his goddess and said 
it made him better to sit and gaze upon her; 
but he had never seen Him who is the Rose of 
Sharon for beauty and the Lily of the Valley 
for loveliness. But it is said of Dannecker, a 
great sculptor of Germany, that he was one 
time asked to use his wonderful skill in carving 
a statue of Venus, and he made a strange 
reply. He had been for years working over a 
face of the Christ and at last produced a face 
of such marvelous beauty and tenderness that 
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people would weep as they looked upon it. 
And when asked to carve a Venus, he replied, 
^'I can never make a Venus after I have looked 
upon the face of Christ." What a secret is 
here ! And what but may be true of us all ! To 
have an appetite which only the things of 
Christ can satisfy speaks already of a soul that 
is growing large, and to nourish it through the 
appointed means of grace, brings such a satis- 
faction to the soul that every sinful attraction 
will lose its power ; and such a vision of His 
beauty that the fairest things of this world will 
lose their splendor. 

2. A second evidence of growth in grace is 
a keener appreciation of how exceedmgly sinfnl 
all sin is, and a correspondingly deeper loathing 
for it. As we grow in grace the more hideous 
and repulsive does sin, of whatever kind, 
become. Dear child, have you really learned 
to hate sin so that you shrink from the least 
touch of it, and when you know it has touched 
you, is your heart wrung with an unspeakable 
agony because your sin has pierced the heart of 
God? I think Paul had come to a place like 
that. Just before he died he called himself the 
chief of sinners. What did he mean? Not 
that he was a greater sinner than when he was 

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yet a babe in Christ or when he blasphemed 
God and waded in the blood of His slaughtered 
saints. No, not that, but that now when he 
knew so much about God, one little sin, how- 
ever small, caused him infinitely more pain 
than all the grosser sins of his former life. 
Child of God, if you have been growing in 
grace, something like that will be true of you. 

3. The third evidence of growth in grace is 
a clearer discernment of right and wrong. I 
will let Paul explain what I mean. In 1 Cor. 
2 :15 it is written, '*He that is spiritual judgeth 
all things," and if you will look in the Revised 
Version you will find the word '* judgeth" 
changed to ^'discerneth," 'Hhe spiritual man 
discerneth all things"; and if you will turn to 
Hebrews 5:14 you will read, ''Strong meat 
belongeth to them that are of full age, even to 
those who by reason of use have their senses 
exercised to discern both good and evil." 

A little child through ignorance of what is 
harmful would be in constant peril of serious 
hurt were it not for the care given it by some 
grown person who has learned by the discrimi- 
nation which comes from long exercise of the 
senses to make proper distinction between 
things which are hurtful and things which are 
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useful. Imagine, if possible, a world in which 
danger always came with noiseless tread and 
invisible form, in which decay was not malo- 
dorous, in which mutilation was painless and 
disease carried on its dread work with no 
warning to its victim; imagine such a world 
and the work of preservation for which the 
senses are responsible is at once apparent. 
What wonderful and indispensable things the 
senses are and to what a degree of accuracy 
they may be trained. But there are spiritual 
senses as well as natural. There is a spiritual 
eye and a spiritual taste and other senses of the 
spiritual man corresponding to those of the 
natural man. But alas, for those who have 
eyes and see not, ears and hear not, and who 
because of their undisciplined senses, senses 
that are not exercised to discern good and evil, 
are in the babe condition, needing a guardian 
to tell them which way to go and what to eat 
lest they be continually indulging that which 
is displeasing to God and hurtful to their own 
souls. 

A soldier was on duty as sentinel in a savage 
country. He had been for many years a 
hunter among the forests. As the night deep- 
ened he heard the cracking of the forest twigs, 
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and looking out he saw what appeared to be a 
wild hog slowly approaching and apparently 
searching among the leaves for the nuts that had 
fallen from the trees. But the hunter's keen 
eye detected a certain awkwardness about the 
movements and suspicion was aroused. To 
fire and shoot a wild hog would be to make 
himself the butt of ridicule among his compan- 
ions, but feeling that his sense of sight so 
trained by use could be depended upon he 
raised his rifle and fired, and with a bound and 
a yell an Indian leaped to his feet and fell back 
dead^ 

How often Satan comes in disguise. How 
often evil presents itself with seeming plausi- 
bility, but the Word of God is that in just the 
degree in which we have arrived to maturity, 
that is according to our growth in grace, will 
be our ability to more readily detect that which 
is inconsistent with the true worship of our 
God. We will see evil where years before we 
would never have thought of even looking for 
it. Things which formerly we would not allow 
ourselves to think of as questionable we will 
now have grace to put away. The word ''un- 
derstanding," used in Isaiah 11:13 to describe 

this faculty of soul, in the original means 
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-'scent" or ''smell,'' and what is promised 
there, is a keenness of scent in the fear of the 
Lord; the ability to detect the obnoxious in 
what others indulge without suspicion of its 
harm; a sensitiveness as it were to danger yet 
a great way off that will drive us to Jesus for 
shelter. Something like this Paul must have 
meant when speaking of spiritually matured 
people as those "who by reason of use have 
their senses exercised to discern both good and 
evil." 

Sometimes Mrs. B. comes into my study and 
she will say, "Why, dear, it is very close in 
here," and I reply, "Well, I hadn't noticed 
it." The reason is plain. I had been sitting 
in that atmosphere for hours, had come some- 
what into harmony with it and was not aware 
of how really unwholesome it was, but she who 
had been downstairs and out-of-doors enjoying 
God's own pure air came into my room with 
her senses sharpened to discern what I could 
not detect, because mine had become dull 
through living in touch with that which was 
foul and unhealthy. Just so there are some 
Christians who are living in the midst of moral 
malaria and do not seem to know it. And 
when they hear some pure-hearted man speak 
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a word of caution against some pet indulgence 
they think him too radical for sensible people 
to listen to, There are Christians who will 
hang unholy pictures on the walls of their 
imagination, who will take up some of the 
impure fiction over which the world is going 
wild and read it with relish through to the end, 
who will indulge in a laagh at remarks which 
could not well be made in mixed society and 
feel no pain though the hurt has been just as 
surely received. People who call themselves 
Christians, and I would not by any language I 
might use mean to unchristianize anybody, 
living in an atmosphere of pleasure and sin 
which would be positively intolerable if they 
only knew the fragrance and the exhilaration 
of the atmosphere that comes from constant 
communion with the living Christ, the vital 
breath of prayer, the uplift from the blessed 
Word, the inspiration found in doing His will. 
Are your spiritual 'senses being exercised by 
reason of use to discern both good and evil? 

4. And now a word about the other evidence 
of such growth. It is victory over sin. We 
certainly must admit that according to the 
measure of one's light it is possible to be kept 
from all known sin — not from falling into 
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temptation but from falling in temptation. 
Whether any allow themselves to be so con- 
stantly and continually kept is not for us to 
say, but to claim this for oneself is far from 
asserting one's perfection. For anyone to talk 
about being ^perfectly sanctified sounds per- 
fectly absurd. Such an one has failed to 
appreciate what holiness really is. Certainly 
we are to be holy ; and we are to be still holier. 
Mr. Meyer says that he was one time paying 
a pastoral visit to a poor washerwoman who 
had just gotten out a line of clothes. He con- 
gratulated her because they looked so white. 
Pleased with her pastor's kind words she invited 
him to have a cup of tea. While they were 
sitting at tea the sky clouded and there was a 
snow storm, and as he came out the white 
snow lay everywhere about, and he said to her, 
"Your washing does not look quite so clean as 
it did." '*Ah," she said, "the washing is 
right enough, but what can stand against God 
Almighty's white?" And so, my friend, you 
may think yourself clean, but if you could only 
see God, if you are a man of true heart, you 
would cry, "Woe is me, for I am undone!" and 
repenting in dust and ashes you would cry, 
"Lord, forgive me!" 

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But while all this is true, still if I did not 
find in my own experience that I am having 
easier victory over sin to-day than I had ten 
years ago, how disappointing to me would be 
the power which the Word teaches comes from 
union with Christ, from the indwelling and 
infilling of His own omnipotent Spirit. Peter 
talks about being "kept by the power of God" 
(1 Peter 1 : 5). Banish forever the thought that 
it is necessary for the Christian to sin. Tempted 
you may be. Jesus was. ''The life of holi- 
ness," says Macgregor, ''is not a life of passive 
rest; it is a conflict. It is a fight; but it is a 
fight of faith (1 Tim. 6:12), and it is a sue* 
cessful fight." Xot freedom from temptation, 
but victory over it. The law of sin is still with 
us. It was with Paul. He had to "keep his 
body under" (1 Cor. 9 : 27) ; when he would do 
good "evil was ever present with him" (Rom. 
7:21), but he knew the secret of victory and 
applied it in his life. He tells about it in 
Rom. 8 : 2. That verse suggests the fight just 
mentioned. How apparent it is that if pro- 
vision is made for the flesh the "law of sin" 
will become strong and the old man's victory 
easy; but if we follow Paul's advice and "make 
no provision for the flesh," but the rather for 
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the ^*things of the Spmt," the ''law of the 
Spirit of His life" within us becomes strong 
and the new man's victory assured. And as 
we go on growing thus from day to day the 
victory becomes easier as we go. It is but 
natural that it should. Victory we may have 
all along the way, but temptation itself loses 
its power for the man of holiness who is ''grow- 
ing up in all things in Him." Are you grow- 
ing? 



104 



*'And He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; 
and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teach- 
ers; for the perfecting of the saints unto the work of 
the ministry, unto the building up of the body of 
Christ; till we all come unto the unity of the 

FAITH AND OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE SON OF GOD, 
UNTO A FULL GROWN MAN, UNTO THE MEASURE OF THE 
STATURE OF THE FULLNESS OF CHRIST; that We be UO 

more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about 
ivith every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men in 
craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; but 
dealing truly in love, may grow up into Him in all 
things, which is the head, even Christ.^* — Saint Paul's 
Epistle to the Epliesians, Chapter 4. 



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THE TYPE OF GEOWTH 

"Till we all come unto the unity of the faith and 
of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full- 
grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the 
fullness of Christ. "—Eph. 4:13. 

HAVING spoken at some length of the 
Christian's growth and deyelopment, I 
wonder if the thought has not already 
been present with many of you concerning the 
type or goal of this development. It is the 
purpose of these closing words to set it before 
you, for I am sure, 

"If thou couldst in vision see 
Thyself, the man God meant, 
Thou never more couldst be 
The man thou art, content." 

In this marvelous passage of Paul's, taken 
from his Ephesian letter, there is doubtless an 
immediate reference to the perfection in Jesus 
Christ of the church as a whole, yet the church 
can only come to the stature of a full grown 
man, as the individuals who compose it are 
likewise perfected in the graces that belong to 
Christian character. And so we have here set 
before us the type of character, the whereunto 
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the Christian is to grow. He is to develop into 
the likeness of Christ. Christ is the type of 
growth. 

You have all read Hawthorne's ''Legend of 
the Stony Face," how the Great Spirit left his 
image upon a rock and went away promising 
to return at a future time, and how one Indian 
gazed upon that face by day and dreamed 
about it by night until his own face began to 
bear its likeness ; and one day when the tribe 
had ceased from war and its spiritual vision 
had become clear, they recognized in him the 
Great Spirit who had come back to earth in 
this waiting prophet's soul. 

Something like that Paul says is to be true 
of the real child of God. This is what he says : 
*'We all with unveiled face beholding as in a 
mirror (and this certainly is the original) the 
glory of the Lord (and by glory is meant char- 
acter), are changed into the same image from 
character to character" (2 Cor. 3:18). Does 
this mean that we are eventually to become, 
each one, another Christ? No, and yes. An 
image is a likeness. There is nothing here of 
Hindoo absorption; nothing of identification 
or of equality ; nothing of this modern deifica- 
tion of man that would make him, in a meas- 
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ure, through sacrificial toil, a savior of the 
world in the same sense with the atoning 
Christ ; but an expression of the transforming 
influence of the devout contemplation of the 
moral beauty and glorious goodness of the Son 
of God. We are to be like Christ; we are so 
to partake of His character that when the 
world sees us, though it be at the trivial round 
and common task, it will say, ''Tell us of the 
Christ whose glory you so reflect." 

And still in a very proper sense we are to be 
ourselves Christs; and here, after all, we are 
going to discover the real secret of our likeness 
to Him. Christ, as it were, has been reincar- 
nated in every Christian, however poorly some 
of us represent Him. At the moment of the 
new birth, Christ takes up His abode in the 
believer's soul and the individual is no more 
himself but Jesus Christ ; all the rest of life is 
a continual denial of himself and an assertion 
of the Christ within, and all the supreme love- 
liness of character is but the expression of the 
perfect man within. When Augustin, who had 
lived in profligacy, gave himself to Christ, he 
renounced his former evil associations. One 
day, when going down the streets of Carthage, 
he met the woman who had been his fascina- 
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tion in the sinful life and ran from her. She 
cried and said, ^' Why do you run, Augustin? It 
is I." And Augustin shouted back, ''I run 
because I am not I." '^ Martin Luther," said 
the great reformer, ''does not live here; Jesus 
Christ lives here," and a greater one than 
Luther long ago said, ''I live, yet not I, but 
Christ liveth in me." Blessed be God such a 
transformation is possible. And the assertion 
of Christ in a believer's being involves the 
reproduction of Christ in a believer's life; hav- 
ing the same mind and disposition with Christ 
in all things, that this world, in taking note 
of the Christian's daily walk and conversation, 
will recognize that Christ has come back to 
earth in another Christian soul. 

Of course it is very important to have a 
noble ideal and an ambition to attain it. We 
have not meant to ignore this truth, although 
we have been studying the attainment of char- 
acter from another viewpoint, and there is no 
ideal so completely worthy to be set before the 
human soul as that presented in the character 
of Jesus Christ; neither can there be any 
nobler aspiration than the ambition to be so 
Christ-like in the deportment of one's life, 
that as you go through the world, the sad and 
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weary souls of earth will see Christ in you and 
bless God for sending you into their midst. 
But when once the character of Jesus is set 
before us in all its unblemished loveliness, is it 
any wonder we despair of ever attaining an 
ideal like unto that? But who has been em- 
phasizing ideals? We've been talking about a 
type, and there's all the difference in the world 
between an ideal and a type. We spoke about 
the reproduction of Christ in life, but not as 
anything a poor, weak, human soul might do. 
We'll have to consider the lilies again, how 
they grow. How do they grow? How does an 
acorn become an oak? Not by trying, but by 
allowing the oak-life within it its own natural 
development, and so the Christian's Christ- 
likeness does not result from an effort of the 
human soul to reproduce the character of 
Christ by imitating an ideal (though we do not 
disparage imitation), but by allowing the 
Christ-life within him to reproduce itself. 
This is what is meant in the scientific world 
by '* Conformity to Type." 

You know what protoplasm is: it's the basis 

of all life; it's the clay from which the potter 

moulds his vessels; but did you know that all 

protoplasm is at least seemingly alike and that 

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if you took the first little speck of it and 
examined it under the highest powers of the 
microscope, you could not tell, though you 
were the most skilled scientist of earth,whether 
that little speck of structureless albuminous- 
like substance would develop into a man or an 
animal or a tree? In the embryo, as it first 
meets the eye, it is impossible to tell whether 
that into which it is to develop will fly in the 
air, or swim in the sea, or walk on the earth, 
or be fixed immovable in it. What then is it 
that makes the difference in the outgrowth of 
that protoplasmic germ? It is a strange some- 
thing that has entered into it, and which is dis- 
tinct from it, and which seizes upon it and 
moulds it into an image of, itself ; a different 
something for the plant, a different something 
for the animal, a different something for man 
and a different something for every different 
type belonging to them. What is this mys- 
terious something? It is the type determining 
life^ the potter who moulds the clay into an 
image of himself. "All life," says Paul, ''is 
not the same life; there is one kind of life of 
men, another life[of beasts, another of fishes and 
another of birds." This mysterious some- 
thing, which no eye can see and no science 
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definBy which enters the protoplasm of a tree is 
the tree-life ; that which enters the protoplasm 
of a fish, the fish-life, and that which enters 
the protoplasm of a man, the man-life, and so 
on, and each of these protoplasmic germs must 
now, according to its nature^ develop into an 
image of the particular life within it, the visi- 
ble vegetable or animal being, as it were, but 
the incarnation of the invisible image stamped 
upon them in their germinal state and which 
by the very nature of things they cannot help 
but reproduce. 

Is there now an analogy to this in the spirit- 
ual world? Is there another kind of life which, 
entering into the spiritual nature of man, 
begins to work itself out as a process of natural 
development? Yes, there is, and what that 
life is we have already seen. It is the Christ- 
life, and just as the man-life develops into the 
image of a man, so the Christ-life develops into 
the image of the Christ, making the man in 
his spiritual nature an exact reproduction of 
the Christ within him. Blessed be God, the 
Christian's Christ-likeness does not result from 
a series of feeble efforts to imitate an extrane- 
ous ideal, but comes from the spontaneous, 
automatic reproduction of an inner life which 
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is as natural as the quiet persistent growth of 
the enameled calyx from the lily bulb. If only 
the conditions of health are maintained there 
need be no anxiety about the image. 

And what does it mean to be like Christ? 
Well, in plain terms, it means we'll be a good 
deal easier to get along with than some of us 
are now. In the home you'll be easier to live 
with ; no longer be so awfully nice away from 
home and cross as a bear in your own house. 
That unruly temper that goes off with a hair- 
trigger will come under control and disappear. 
That thin-skinned sensitiyeness, that is always 
getting its feelings hurt, will disappear, because 
the self -life will be crucified and a dead man 
isn't supposed to have any feelings. All that 
bitterness of heart and unforgiving spirit will 
take wings, and when you've buried your ani- 
mosity you'll not spend any time putting 
flowers on its grave. That ''good as anybody 
else, and a little better" feeling will give place 
to a becoming humility and you won't pride 
yourself on it when you get it either. There'll 
be a change in that life of worldliness that has 
caused people to wonder what the difference 
was any way between you and some others who 
never professed to be Christians. 
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But why particularize? Look at His tran- 
scendent character, the dazzling glory of His 
moral beauty, and think of growing up, as Paul 
says, in all things into Him ! Think of being 
like Him — like Him in His sublime and unfal- 
tering faith in the righteous purpose and power 
of the God of heayen to redeem the world 
though all the powers of hell be set against it; 
like Him in His cheerful obedience to His 
Father's will, though it wrung His soul with 
unspeakable agony to perform it ; like Him in 
His self-forgetful earnestness that made His 
whole existence a continuous Calyary passion 
for His fellowmen; like Him in His infinite 
forgiveness that came from a heart without a 
grain of personal animosity even though His 
persecutors nailed Him, in their wrath, to the 
cross of His crucifixion; like Him in His 
tender compassion that sent His heart out with 
an infinite yearning to the poor and distressed 
and made His life a mission of mercy to the 
heirs of misfortune ; like Him in His calm and 
gentle self-control, answering nothing though 
reviled and insulted by the brutal mob; like 
Him in His sweet humility that made the con- 
scious Sovereign of the Universe, with all His 
supreme dignity, a little child among the men 
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of earth; and above all, like Him in the 
pure whiteness of His soul, which, though it 
came in contact with defilement, like the 
enameled lily, was never sullied by its touch. 
Like Him in all these and in all the other 
traits of His lovely character. 

Well might one despair of ever attaining any- 
thing like such perfection of moral beauty if he 
were left to his own feeble effort after right- 
eousness. To imitate such an ideal, how were 
it in any appreciable degree possible? But it's 
not imitation we're dwelling upon. It's some- 
thing better than that. It's conformity to type. 
It is the Christ-life, the new man reproducing 
His image in the human soul. We are not to 
conform ourselves but we are to le conformed. 
The verbs in such passages are all in the passive 
voice. ''Whom He did foreknow, He also did 
predestinate to le conformed to the image of 
His Son." ''Beholding as in a glass the glory 
of the Lord we are transformed into the same 
image from glory to glory. " "Put on the new 
man which is reneived in knowledge after the 
image of Him that created him, ' ' And once 
more the same apostle, for it is Paul who is 
saying all this, says, "My little children, of 
whom I travail in birth again until Christ le 
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formed in you." And what is all this but 
what we have been saying? that of ourselves 
we are insufficient to accomplish anything, but 
that it is the living Christ within whose work- 
manship we are and the beauty of whose holi- 
ness is upon us as He works within us to will 
and to do of His good pleasure. 

Somewhere I have read of an artist falsely 
accused and thrown into prison. His brushes 
and paint were allowed him, but he had no 
canvas. One day he asked a man in the corri- 
dor for something upon which he might paint, 
and the man indifferently picked up an old 
soiled handkerchief and tossing it to him said, 
*' There, see what you can do with that," and 
the artist began to paint upon it the face of 
Jesus. The picture that he painted afterward 
became one of the famous paintings of the 
Master's face. He labored on it faithfully and 
when it was finished he showed it to the man 
and when he looked upon its marvelous sweet- 
ness it touched his heart and the tears flowed 
unbidden down. And as I recall the story the 
thought comes to me, if a poor artist could 
take an old soiled rag and so make it glow with 
the loveliness of Jesus that a careless, indiffer- 
ent man could be touched into tears as he 
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looked upon it, what might not the glorious 
Christ do with my life if I would but allow 
Him to have His way with me to reproduce 
His likeness through me. 

The best developments are always slow. 
Oaks do not grow up like mushrooms in a 
single night, and solid godly characters are not 
the products of a few months. It is a law in 
the natural world that the highest type of life 
develops most slowly, and as the spiritual is so 
much higher than the natural in man, why 
should we feel discouraged if the perfect char- 
acter is not produced like the growth of an as- 
paragus plant or like the maturity of a monad 
in the lower world. We must not forget that 
law of universal application, ''First the blade, 
then the ear, then the full corn in the ear." 
So let us live on, growing day by day ''in grace 
and in the knowledge of Christ," remembering 
that when we have attained unto the best pos- 
sible in this life, "it doth not yet appear what 
we shall be," but ever rejoicing in that when 
He shall appear the likeness shall be complete. 
Oh, sweet, transporting thought! 

*'I shall be like Him, wondrously like Him, 
And in His beauty shall share." 

Heaven after all is God's sample room of His 
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finished work. Suppose we are yisiting a pot- 
tery, desirous of seeing the product of the 
establishment; we might be shown to the 
mixing-room where the clays are stirred 
together and on up to the molding-room where 
the yases and the various vessels take their 
shape in obedience to the will of the skillful 
artisan, but we would not have seen what the 
factory could really do until we had followed 
its varied processes clear up to the sample 
room, where the finished work stands in all its 
beauty and perfection. It is so with our 
growth in grace, with our conformity to the 
image of His Son, and though '4t doth not 
yet appear what we shall be, we know that 
when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for 
we shall see Him as He is." 

Not long ago in England a young man, 
blinded in early youth by an accident, was 
married to a beautiful young lady. He was of 
high social position and in spite of his blind- 
ness had won honors at the university. He 
had courted and won his bride although he 
had never looked upon her face. He had 
undergone a course of treatment that gave the 
surgeon such encouragement as to make him 
confident of a favorable outcome, and they had 
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arranged the final test for the hour of the cere- 
mony. The young man, his eyes still shrouded 
in linen, drove with his father, Sir William 
Hart Dyke, to the church. Miss Cave, the 
bride, came, leaning on her father's arm. So 
moved was she, she could not speak. Was her 
lover at last to see her face, the beautiful face 
that others admired but which he had known 
only through the delicate touch of his finger 
tips? She neared the altar as the soft strains 
of Lohengrin's wedding march floated through 
the building, and there beheld a strange scene. 
Sir William Hart Dyke stood there with his 
son and before them the great occulist just in 
the act of cutting away the bandage. The 
bandage fell. The young lover stood just a 
moment as if in the uncertainty of a dream. 
One step forward — a beam of rose-colored light 
fell into his face as it came shooting through 
the stained window of the cathedral, but he 
did not seem to see it. Did he see anything? 
Yes, before him was a face from which he could 
not tear his gaze, and as if just coming into 
consciousness of where he was, with a look of 
joy such as mortals scarcely ever know, he 
stepped forward to meet his bride. They 
looked into each other's eyes, and one would 
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have thought his own would never have wan- 
dered from her face, '^At last?" she said, still 
in uncertainty. *'At last, at last," he echoed, 
solemnly. ''No longer through a glass darkly," 
says Paul, ''but face to face," for I shall see 
Him as He is, and when I see Him as He is I 
shall be like Him. After all that I have been 
able to become here, and my life has not been 
altogether without victory, I have beheld, as in 
a mirror, the spotless beauty of my Christ, I 
have felt like crying, "Depart from me, O 
Lord, for I am a sinful man," but oh, what a 
promise is this — "Changed into His own image 
from glory unto glory," and when at last I 
stand in His presence, fuU-statured and clear- 
eyed, that transformation will be complete — a 
heart like His and a face like His — and as I 
look with untrammeled vision into His eyes I 
shall see reflected back no longer my own 
deformity and imperfection, but I shall see an 
image like Him — for when I see Hun as Seis I 
shall be like Him, 



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